I Was Right on Time

O'Neil, Buck. I Was Right on Time. New York: Simon & Schuster 1996. Print.

First Sentences:

Call me Buck.


Description:

Since it is nearing the end of summer and therefore the baseball season, I thought fans might enjoy this highly entertaining, first-hand account of the Negro Leagues as written by a player from that era. Buck O'Neil's I Was Right on Time offers an insider's look at and stories about the players, teams, stadiums, and fans, along with the quirks of each one as remembered by O'Neil, an actual Negro League player, featured storyteller on the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee.

 

O'Neil, using his conversationally casual writing style, takes us on his personal journey from his boyhood days playing pick-up baseball games to his eventual signing to play with the mighty Kansas City Monarchs, considered to be one of the best Negro teams ever, with lineups that included Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, Bullet Joe Rogan, and Rube Foster. The Monarchs were the first team to play under the lights, mounted on telephone poles which gave them a home field advantage for any ball hit into the darkness above those low-level lights. Hde later became a scout and coach in the (White) major league.

And the stories are absolutely the best, particularly those featuring O'Neil's teammate, Satchel Paige. O'Neil laughs at the events that caused Paige to always refer to O'Neil as "Nancy." O'Neil also recounts when, in the Negro League World Series with the Homestead Grays and their feared home-run hitter, Josh Gibson, Paige intentionally walked the bases loaded just to face Gibson in a critical situation to see who was the best. Or the time Paige told all his fielders to leave their positions and come to the mound while he went about striking out the side.

O'Neil writes about players with colorful nicknames: Sea Boy, Gunboat, Steel Arm Davis, Ankleball Moss, Copperknee, Mosquito, Popeye, and Suitcase. Of course, there are anecdotes about the more famous Negro League players such as Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Frank Robinson (the first major league Black manager), Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Bob Gibson as well as some tremendously talented, if lesser known stars like Larry Doby,  Luke Easter, Smokey Joe Williams, Josh Gibson,and Cool Papa Bell ("So fast he could get into bed after switching off the light switch before the room got dark." Spoiler: Bell had noticed a slight in his hotel room's on/off switch, causing a slight delay before the lights went black. Bell won some money from a gullible Paige for that neat trick).

 

And O'Neil clears up many misconceptions, such as that the one that Negro League players were inferior to white major leaguers. O'Neil compares all-star lineups from each league and concludes the Negro players would have a strong chance to beat their White counterparts. Also, his league did not play make-shift games in rag-tag environments with poor equipment as so often was portrayed in movies. Negro Leaguers in fact played established schedules in up-to-date ball parks, cheered on by fans that rivaled the major league parks in attendance numbers.

O'Neil has plenty of stories as well from his own later career as a major league coach and scout. I particularly gasped when, while in Mississippi scouting for the Chicago Cubs, O'Neil once got lost looking for the Jackson State-Grambling game and ended up at an unknown field where the Klu Klux Klan was holding a fund-raising rally in white robes and full hooded regalia.

As a member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee, O'Neil was instrumental in petitioning the Hall to consider including Negro League players initially not eligible for the Hall. Later, he and the Veterans Committee were tasked to come up with the historic Negro League players worthy  to be considered for Hall inclusion. Luckily, O'Neil had either played with, coached, or at least heard about most of the best men from the past.

 

But O'Neil also inserts a few examples of the prejudices facing him and these players, from restaurants to hotels to press coverage, that still go on as he wrote this book.

I still hear African-American players referred to as "articulate," as if we should be surprised a black man speaks so well. I still see a black player labeled as an underachiever, while a while player who carries the same stats is called an overachiever. Joe DiMaggio? Why, when people talk of him, they talk of his grace and his intelligence and his consistency. Willie Mays? He was "naturally gifted," as if he didn't have to work as hard as DiMaggio to be come a great ballplayer. Poppycock. From 1949-1962, eleven of the fourteen National League MVP trophies went to black men, and all of them, including Mays, Aaron, and Banks, worked damn hard to get those trophies.

But for the most part, O'Neil revels in the wonderful opportunity he had to be a part of this league and play with these men who were heroes in their communities. It's a warm, funny, honest depiction of that era, one that any fan (or anyone else) interested in fascinating stories about bigger-than-life personalities playing the game they loved.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ritter, Lawrence. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It.  

The definitive book of early baseball in the late 1800s through the early1900s as told through oral interviews with the men who played the game then. (previously reviewed here)

The Baseball 100

Posnanski, Joe. The Baseball 100. New York: The Athletic. 2021. Print.

First Sentences:

There are many words we sportswriters use way too often. We might write that something quite believable is 'unbelievable" and that something that falls well into the realm of the possible is actually "impossible." But, if I had to guess, I would say that most of all we use the word "unique" too often.

    [Comments on Ichiro Suzuki, the first player profiled - rank #100.]


Description:

It never gets old to discuss the greatest baseball players of all time. Ranking the Top 100 adds an even greater challenge. But backing up an all-time greatest list with statistics, first-hand observations, comparisons, and commentary from articles, books, interviews, and other relevant resources makes a strong case for which players and rankings shake out in a convincing Top 100 list.

In The Baseball 100, writer Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, New York Times, etc. fame, presents his own well-researched list of choices for the greatest players of all time. And it is a compelling, convincing, fascinating, detailed, and astonishing lust. While I personally am no longer the biggest baseball fan, I absolutely loved reading about the players I have heard about or even watched play in my younger days.

The book is more than just Ruth, Cobb, DiMaggio, Berra, Mays, and other familiar names. No, Posnanski introduces the cases for less-famous (to me, at least) Bullet Rogan (#92), Charlie Gehringer (#87), Kid Nichols (#82), Monte Irvin (#69), Smokey Joe Williams (#62), Arky Vaughan (#61) and Oscar Charleston (unbelievably #5!). Each player gets 5-8 pages of stories, stats, quotes, media coverage, and interviews to substantiate Posnanski's case for their inclusion on this list.

And what a page-turner this book it, all 869 pages of it. I couldn't stop myself from reading about childhood heroes and learning about unknowns who with their dazzling skills made significant marks. I loved reading about their childhoods, with overbearing (Mantle #11) or gentle fathers (Mathewson #36); rich (Cobb #8) or poor (Aaron #4); naturally gifted (Mays #1) or driven but possessing fewer skills (Rose #60); good-looking (Williams #6) or short and squat (Berra #43); Jewish (Koufax #70) or racist (Collins #29); young (Feller age 16 #55) or Paige (age 58+ #10). Every player is given a detailed analysis and a recap of his moments of glory.

  

[Probably just listing these players' rankings might raise some arguments in any dedicated reader's mind, but that what makes this book wonderful.] Here are some highlights:

• Reggie Jackson #59 - "I didn't come to New York to be a star. ...I brought my star with me."
• Warren Spahn #49 - always wanted to be a hitter, not a pitcher until he saw his high school team's first baseman (Spahn's position) and said, "That guy is a lot better than I am" and decided then and there to become a pitcher.
• Yogi Berra #43 - had only 12 strikeouts in the entire 1950 season.
• Nap Lajoie #39 - under "fixed" conditions, went 8 for 8 on the last day of the season to beat Cobb for the batting title and win a new car.
• Satchel Paige # 10 - threw rocks as a boy to protect himself from gangs. "Rocks made a real impression on a kid's head or backside," he said.
• Jimmie Foxx #33 - after retirement from baseball at age 37, coached a women's baseball team and was the inspiration for the Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) character in the film, A League of Their Own.
• Johnny Bench #30 - caught a fast ball bare-handed just to convince his pitcher he had no speed that day.
• Pop Lloyd #25 - played catcher one game for the Macon Acmes. Since the team couldn't afford catching equipment, he played without a mask, knee or chest protectors, winding up with two swollen eyes and bruises all over his body. That was when he became a shortstop.
• Ricky Henderson # 24 - Jim Murray wrote of Henderson's squatting batting stance, "He has a strike zone the size of Hitler's heart."
• Lefty Grove #22 - in his first game, age 19, he pitched seven inning and struck out 15; in the second game he threw a no-hitter and struck out 18
• Tris Speaker #18 - played so shallow in center field that he made 450 assists (a record never to be broken - second is Mays with less than half that number). He also made six unassisted double plays.
• Stan Musial #9 - would go up to strangers celebrating in a restaurant, borrow a $1 bill, fold it into a ring, and slip it onto the fan's finger just to add to their fun and memories. He also carried a harmonica with him everywhere, but could only play four songs.
• Ty Cobb # 8 - in 1947, age 60, he was asked at an old timers' game what he would hit in modern baseball. "About 300," he said, "but you've got to remember I'm 73 years old."
• Walter Johnson #7 - A batter who faced him "saw (or didn't see) two fastballs go by for strikes and headed back to the dugout. 'You've got another strike coming,' the umpire shouted to the player. 'I don't want it,' the hitter said. 'I've seen enough.'"
• Ted Williams #6 - could "hear a single boo in a Fenway Park filled with cheers."
• Henry Aaron #4 - as a kid practiced hitting with a broomstick and a bottle cap.
• Babe Ruth #2 - in 1920 was sold by Boston to the "lamentable New York Yankees who had never won a single pennant in their entire existence."

I have dozens more of quotes I'd marked while reading, but I'll stop here. Suffice to say, it's a fantastic book for any baseball aficionado or even for a casual fan interested in human stories, history, culture, jargon, and even a bit of baseball. Get it now to read or pass on to someone you love. They will love you back for a long time as they work their way through the players' profiles ...each and every one of them.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Peterson, Robert. Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams.   

Simply wondrous oral history of the Negro Leagues as told through interviews with the men who played the game in those days of segregation. Real baseball lingo, lore, and memories here. Fantastic peek into that era, its players, and their baseball lives.

 

Tip of the Iceberg

Adams, Mark. Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. New York: Dutton, 2018. Print.

First Sentences:

On March 25, 1899, a gentleman from New York City arrived unannounced at the Washington D.C. office of C. Hart Merriam. At the age of forty-three, Merriam had already been practicing science seriously for three decades, dating back to some unauthorized taxidermy performed on his sister's dead cat.

 

Description: 

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman commissioned an exploration trip to Alaska's inner seaway passage. He included experts in a variety of fields, from geology to glaciology to botany to cartography to literature. Harriman's purpose was to have these men explore, document, and discovery interesting phenomena from this 3,000-mile voyage up the inner coast of Alaska.

The scientists included John Muir, glaciologist and wilderness expert; George Bird Grinnell, the founder of the Audubon Society; Georg Steller, naturalist; William Dall, the "dean of Alaska explorers"; Edward Curtis, photographer; and John Burroughs, writer and chronicler of the expedition. 

Harriman's mission had two personal goals:

• Enable scientists in various fields to survey the wonders of Alaska, enlarge their collections of specimens, and share their findings...
• Return...with a trophy bear

Now, over 100 years later, travel writer Mark Adams decided to re-trace the route of those scientists to understand what they first saw and how the Alaska of today had changed (or remained the same).

His trip is beautifully, often humorously chronicled in Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. Jumping between primary resources from Harriman's exploration, Alaskan history, and his own journey, Adams deftly manages to immerse readers into the past and present worlds of Alaska and its people.

For his trip, Adams chose to utilize the Alaska Marine Highway System of transport boats "designed to move people and vehicles long distances to remote places for a reasonable price."

Alaska's ferries have as much in common with Greyhound buses as with anything offered by Norwegian Cruise Line, but..with a little patience, Dramamine, and maybe a few time-saving shortcuts, it appeared possible to ride the three thousand miles from Washington State to Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutians, in about two months, the same time the Harriman Expedition took.

Breathtaking descriptions and adventures follow, and we lucky readers are fortunate to be able to sit close to Adams as he observes, researches, and interacts with this fascinating, challenging environment. Glaciers, indigenous people, totems, kayaks, mountains, and plenty of quiet contemplation are all on Adams' daily agenda.

Along the way, Adams learns valuable wisdom, such as how to deal with bears which are everywhere: play dead with brown bears, but fight back against black bears. Unfortunately, the only way to tell these bears apart is by a hump on the brown bear's back, (just reach around to feel for it while the bear is mauling you to determine your best course of action). The best advice he heard: "Bring a gun and someone slower than you."

Also, he learned through talking with local people and by personal observation that glaciers, which had once advanced 1,000 feet a day, were now located 63 miles back from where they were 250 years ago.

He visits Cordova, the scene of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and Whittier (population 200, many from American Samoa); "The Weirdest Town in Alaska" and inspiration for the television series, "Northern Exposure"; and an active volcano in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Too much else to share with you. If you are interested in Alaska, exploration, history, and people, this is the travel book for you.

[While kayaking in Glacier Bay] We were surrounded on all sides by the park's namesake rivers of ice flowing down from the mountains. Their frozen innards glowed a phosphorescent blue that eclipsed the cloudless sky above. A few times every hour, the giants discharged ice from their wrinkled faces -- crack, rumble, splash -- one of nature's most spellbinding performances.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ehrlich, Gretel. This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland.   

One of my favorite authors, Gretel Ehrlich, describes in her beautiful prose her life visiting and living in Greenland. She is the best at putting a reader into the environment, giving both history and current conditions, descriptions of the personalities she encounters, all the while examining her own feelings for the region and her place in it. Excellent.

 

Hollywood: The Oral History

Bassinger, Jeanine and Sam Wasson. Hollywood: The Oral History. New York: HarperCollins 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

In 1969, the American Film Institute held the first of what would be an ongoing series of intimate conversations between Hollywood professionals and AFT conservatory students. These became the Harold Lloyd Master Seminars, named in honor of their very first guest....All are experts in their fields. They are the artists, the craftspeople, the producers, the salesmen. Some are famous, others obscure. They speak with the attitudes of their own time, but they speak with authority.


Description:

After books, movies are one of my favorite entertainments. From the black and white Silents to the latest Indy film, watching them with my wife is one of the highlights of any day (or night). So what could be better than reading a book about films as told by the people intimately involved with all aspects of the creation of that medium?

 

So along comes the the American Film Institute with a desire and the means to preserve the history of cinema as told by the people who lived it in all eras. From stars to directors, screenwriters, stunt people, and representatives from other film production, the AFI sat them down and recorded over 3,000 interviews starting in 1969.

 

Authors Jeanine Bassinger and Sam Wasson were given complete access to the transcripts of these seminars and assembled the discussions into their wonderful book of the origins of film, Hollywood: The Oral History

 

And who contributes opinions and memories to this history? Well, everyone who was/is anyone in the film industry. Over 300 seminar participants contributed. Starting with the hugest of starts, Harold Lloyd (silent comedian), and Hoot Gibson (silent film cowboy), Hollywood: The Oral History records the conversations between (among many others):

• Directors: Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Peter Bogdanovich, Orson Welles, George Cukor, King Vidor, Roger Corman, Ron Howard, George Lucas, Jordan Peele, Spike Lee, Francois Truffaut, and Billy Wilder; 

• Actors: Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Charleton Heston, Lillian Gish, Fay Wray (remember King Kong?), Henry Fonda,  Shirley MacLaine, and Natalie Wood; 

• Production members: Harry Warren (songwriter for "At Last" and 800+ other songs), Edith Head (costumer), Howard Strickline (publicist), and Fritz Lang (producer); 

• Writers: Richard Schickel (film historian), Arthur Knight (critic), Adele Rogers St. Johns, and Paul Mazursky. And so many, many more.

Seminars were organized in the book include topic such as, "The Silents," "Comedy," "Silent Directors," "Studio Workforce," "Packaging," "Monstors," and "The End of the System."

 

You can certainly read this book from page 1 to page 739, but you might prefer to just dip into section where you see a name or topic you know and immerse yourself in hearing experts casually talk about their memories, hopes, and frustrations of their film experiences. Kind of like eavesdropping on interesting conversations at a crowded party, drifting from group to group, only moving on when another conversation pulls you over. 

Here's some tidbits from the "Silent" section that I "overheard" to give an idea of the language, memories, and commentaries these professionals displayed:

[Harold Lloyd]:  We never had a script until we made a talking picture....I think we were one of the very first, even back in the old one-reel days, to start previews

[Gene Kelly]: Buster Keaton had a great influence on me. I certainly intuitively copied a lot of his moves...He was a complete genius, and there was a lot of dance inherently in his movements. They were balletic.

[Rouben Mamoulian, director]: First you had these cheap little nickelodeons that were nothing--amusement--you put a nickel in, and you see a ballerina dancing. Then a giant, D.W. Grittith, walks in, and with one film, Birth of a Nation, which could also be called 'birth of the art,' created a new fine art of film.

Lillian Gish (actress): When [D.W. Griffith] started taking close-ups, up in the office they said, "We pay for the whole actor."

[Melvin LeRoy, director and one-time silent film cameraman]: Cecil B. DeMille always said that I was the first one who invented soft focus...because I got everything out of focus.

I have so many more quotes, sections, and seminar participants I wanted to mention, but realized if anyone wasn't fascinated by the contents of this book by now, adding more details would probably not convince them.

 

But if you are a film buff or just enjoy learning great stories about the movies, or if you just delight in hearing the industry's phraseology, slang, and insightful references from the people who participated in or heard first-hand from colleagues about these events, then Hollywood: An Oral History is definitely for you. It is the best you will ever find in revealing the inside stories of the people, events, and machinations of all aspects of film-making.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Vance, Jeffrey and Suzanne Lloyd. Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian

Highly detailed biography of Harold Lloyd, his films, photographs, and the early silent era of movie-making. A must for anyone interested in oral and well-researched histories of the cinema  (previously reviewed here)

  

Four Lost Cities

Newitz, Annalee. Four Lost Cities: A Secret History to the Urban Age. New York: Norton 2021. Print

First Sentences:

I stood on the crumbling remains of a perfectly square island at the center of an artificial lake created by hydraulic engineers 1,000 years ago.


Description:

Ancient people, civilizations, and cities have always fascinated me since traveling in my youth to climb around the Mexican pyramids of Chichen Itsa and the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, AZ. Nearby today, there are ancient mounds near my home in Ohio. These relics always whisper of mystery, intrigue, and wonder as viewers try to imagine the people, culture, and engineers who constructed and lived with these monuments to human achievement. 

 

Science journalist Annalee Newitz is a like-minded person. In her book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History to the Urban Age, she thoroughly researches four great ancient cities: the 7,000-year-old Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk, Turkey; the 2,500-year-old Pompeii; the Cambodian city of Angkor (from 1,000 years ago); and Cahokiawith, with its pyramids and mounds in southern Illinois, also inhabited about 1,000 years ago.

 

For each city, she interviewers researchers, anthropologists, archeologists, and other scientists to piece together what is known of these ancient urban areas. Always, she visits the sites, picking up details about the people who lived there as she paints a realistic picture of what their lives were like. 

For Pompeii, a scientist who studies the ancient roads, told her he noticed the ruts were the same distance apart, showing all carts were uniform in wheel base. He also noted that curbs were worn down on the right side, revealing that vehicles often cut corners while turning right, gradually eroding the curbs. No such breakage occured on the left curbs. The implication was that traffic direction flowed from the right side, like traffic in the United States, rather than from the left side as in England. Who could not enjoy reading about such details?

In Catalhoyuk, thought to be one of the first cities in the world, Newitz researches the causes behind why humans who settled there switched from being wandering nomads to creators of a cluster of permanent shelters. The next question she explores is why these early city-dwellers  chose to remain in the same location for thousands of years, building and then re-building on top of the foundations of their old cell-like homes (after filling in the old unit with all their trash to serve as a more solid foundation). 

After carefully assembling this scientific data of the cities and people, Newitz uses other interviews with experts to try to understand why these thriving urban developments were later abandoned. Was the emptying of the city a sudden geological occurrence as with Pompeii, or did the departure of inhabitants occur over many, many years as the artifacts from Angkor and Catalhoyuk suggest? Environment? Politics? Food shortage? Fire? Other factors?

 

Four Lost Cities is a thoroughly engrossing book, clearly-written and understandable to non-scientists like me. Newitz has a passion for history, people, behavior, and cities that shows on every page. If you are intrigued by history, people, culture, and unraveling mysteries, this is the book for you. Highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Preston, Douglas. The Lost City of the Monkey God.   

In 2012, author Douglas used sophisticated lidar radar from a plane to locate a lost city densely covered and forgotten by the forest of Honduras. Rumors of the fabulous riches of the "White City" have been whispered since the  days of the Spanish conquistadors. This book details the true adventures, dangers, ferocious animals, disease and other challenges experienced in the exploration Douglas undertakes to rediscover this ancient, sprawling city.   (previously reviewed here)

 

We Die Alone

 Howarth, David. We Die Alone. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press 1955. Print.

First Sentences:

Even at the end of March, on the Arctic coast of northern Norway, there is no sign of spring. 

 

By then, the polar winter night is over....There is nothing green at all: no flowers or grass, and no buds on the stunted trees.


Description:

As we drift into the fall months of cooler temperatures, of warmer jackets, and maybe a few snowflakes, it's a bit shocking to read a true story revolving around really, and I mean REALLY COLD weather. David Howarth's We Die Alone: A WW II Epic of Escape and Endurance

is exacly such a gripping, historical adventure set in the frigid temperatures of northern Norway. But be warned. When you read this book, it's best to have on warm clothes and a hot drink nearby, preferably sitting in front of a roaring fire with a cozy blanket wrapped around you.

During World War II in 1943, twelve Norwegian resistance fighters embarked on a mission of sabatoge in the northernmost part of Norway, an isolated outpost controlled by the Nazis and vital to their control of sea routes. The saboteurs' goal was to blow up key Nazi munitions depots and organize Norwegian resistance in that area. 

Unfortunately, the men were betrayed and eleven of the Norwegians were killed upon reaching their target.

But one man escaped, Jan Baalsrud, by running across frozen fields that night partially barefoot (he'd lost a shoe when jumping from their boat into the sub-freezing water). On top of that, he was hobbled by a bleeding foot where one of his toes had been shot off. 

To avoid capture, he had to swim (again in the sub-freezing water) from their target on an island to the mainland of Norway, then set out on foot (deep snow, no shoe, bleeding toe, remember?) for dry clothing, shelter, food, and help to reach safety in a bordering neutral country. 

And so begins his journey of months filled with isolated countryside, high mountains, deep snow, German patrols, an avalanche, and, of course, the unrelenting, freezing temperatures.

In the valley bottom were frozen lakes where the going was hard and smooth; but between them the snow lay very deep, and it covered a mass of boulders, and there he could not tell as he took each step whether his foot would fall upon rock or ice, or a snow crust which would support him, or whether it would plunge down hip deep into the crevices below.

For the escaping Baalsrudven, finding any form of help was difficult and dangerous for all involved. Anyone he contacted could be a Nazi supporter or at least an informer. The few local Norwegians in the area had to protect their families and lives, since assisting a Nazi fugitive was punishable by death to the entire family, slaughter of all livestock, and destruction of the farmland. 

 

Yet many gladly helped him. Word had slowly spread through the desolate countryside that one man had escaped the Nazi sabeteur killings. Through this grapevine, Baalsrud became a secret hero to the quiet Norwegian farmers, a symbol of their national pride, strength, and resistance to the occupying Nazis. And so they helped in small, but vitally important ways, especially when several times Baalsrud was on the verge of death.

As one Norwegian farmer reflected:

At last it was something which he and only he could possibly do. If he could never do anything else to help in the war, he would have this to look back on now; and he meant to look back on it with satisfaction, and not with shame. He thanked God for sending him this chance to prove his courage....[He told Baalsrud] "If I live, you will live, and if they kill you I will have died to protect you."

Challenge after challenge presented itself to Baalsrud. Wearing only grimy rags of frozen clothes, starving, and suffereing from painful injuries and frostbite, Baalsrud continually astonishes us readers with his perserverence. Example after example of his courage, will, and seemingly endless supply of optimism drives this adventure tale forward, forcing readers to bundle up and continue following Baalsrud to his ultimate journey's end. Absolutely highly recommended.

[P.S. There is also a film called, The Twelfth Man (available on DVD and Amazon Prime) that is a breathtaking representative of the book, especially in portraying myriad of challenges and undying perserverence of Baalsrud ... and the unbearable, unrelenting cold.]

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Rawicz, Slavomir. The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom.   

Incredible true story detailing the author's 1941 capture, prison life and eventual escape from a Soviet labor camp in Siberia. His route took him through China, Tibet, the Gobi Desert, and India, all while experiencing desperate cold, hunger, thirst, and fear of recapture. 

Give Me My Father's Body

Harper, Kenn. Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo. New York: Washington Square Press 1986. Print

First Sentences:
 

Qisuk and Nuktqo were at Cape York already when the vessel hove into view. They recognized her from a distance -- it was the Hope again, the same chartered Newfoundland sealer that had come the year before...It was August 1897. This was Robert Peary's fourth expedition to northwestern Greenland, the home of the Polar Eskimos.


Description:

This is the true history of Minik, a Polar Eskimo (this is the author's historic term) who as a child lived alone in New York City at the turn of the century. Brilliantly, heartbreakingly told by Kenn Harper in Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo, this is a book that grabs you immediately for its uniqueness of story, characters, and setting. 

In 1897, Robert Peary, the polar explorer, returned to the United States from his most recent voyage to northwest Greenland. Among other treasures from this failed quest to reach the North Pole, Peary brought with him six Polar Eskimos. He felt these four unique adults and two children would be welcome gifts to be studied by anthropologists at the Museum of Natural History, (although the museum had not asked Peary to bring them any "live specimens"). 

All six Eskimos were scheduled to live in New York City for one season and then be returned to their home on Peary's next voyage. One of these Eskimos was Minik, a six-year-old child who had accompanied his father from Greenland.

Unfortunately, these newcomers almost immediately succumbed to pneumonia. Four died in the first months, including Minik's father. One Eskimo child was able to sail back home safely, but the now-orphaned Minik remained in the city where he spent months living in the museum basement, studied by scientists, and on display to the public. Eventually he was adopted by a wealthy family and began to live a new life of ease in America.

But that idyllic life was brief.

His adopted family became financially ruined. The museum, for their part, could not offer Minik housing or support. Peary did not want to any assume any responsibility for the boy and never communicated with child. Minik's life at a young age became that of an outsider, living on the streets in a foreign land, trying to learn a new language and the ways of Americans, without support from family, friends, or scientists.

Author Harper relates Minik's story in Greenland and New York, using his extensive research into diaries, newspaper articles, museum notes, interviews, and other documents of the day. Harper, who lived in the Arctic for over thirty years and is fluent in those native languages, also provides numerous photos of Minik, his family, museum scientists, and even Peary to better bring the book's narrative to life.

The book's title is taken from Minik's own words in trying to recover his father's skeleton from the museum. He had shockingly noticed that his father's bones were on public display in the museum along with his father's precious kayak, knife, and furs. Minik wanted to recover his father's bones and what were now his own rightful possessions, then return to his home in Greenland for a traditional Eskimo burial. With no cooperation from the museum and almost no ships equipped to sail that far north, Minik was forced to remain for years alone, without his father's remains, in the United States, apart from his true home.

I won't reveal whether Minik ever does return to Greenland. If he did return, one can just imagine what he might find there, what his reception would be, and whether he could even grow to stand the bitter cold of Northern Greenland. You'll just have to read the book to find out.

It's a gripping, fascinating, and deeply personal history of one person struggling to understand his old and new worlds. You won't regret picking it up and immersing yourself into the turn of the century world of exploration and science, and the life of one boy from a far-off land.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds.   

True account of Ishi, the last surviving Native American, a genuine Stone Age man, who was found in California in 1911. He had avoided all people outside his region for 40 years until his entire tribe including his family had died. The book chronicles his last years in the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco where he was studied for his fascinating, unique skills, lifestyle, and history. A wonderful, tragic look into humankind's past and survival techniques. 

The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini

Posnanski, Joe. The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini. New York: Avid Reader 2019. Print

First Sentences:

"Ladies and gentlemen," Harry Houdini sang, for in those days he did sing. 

Houdini's voice in many ways was more magical than any escape of illusion. 

Description:

I enjoy magic without being a student of it. Love being entertained by illusions without feeling the need to analyze the trick or figure out how I was fooled. 

Therefore, I love magic-themed biographies, historical fiction, and plain old novels rather than books with tell-all expositions of tricks and fakery. This means my favorites include fantastic books like Carter Beats the Devil, The World of Wonders, and The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo.

Well, you can add Joe Posnanski's The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini to my list of wonderful biographies of magicians. Although technically Erich Weiss (aka Harry Houdini) was never a great magician, his is the one name from the world of magic that everyone worldwide knows. Carter, Thurston, Blackstone, Robert-Houdin, and even Doug Henning and David Copperfield are now forgotten or only memories to those who actually saw them perform. But Houdini survives and his name is universally applied to anything involving escape, whether toddlers climbing out of cribs or octopuses slithering out of their tanks. All are "Houdini-like."

Author Posnanski decides to explore every news article, book, film, fact and rumor about Harry Houdini and his fame as an escape artist in the early 20th century. His hope is to cut away the rumors, exaggerations, and outright lies about Houdini and present just the known facts. Most of what we know about Houdini is from primary sources such as newspaper articles, promotional posters, and books of the day. However, most of these were written by Houdini himself, submitted to local media while performing in local theaters. Of course, much of this was simply exaggeration or outright untruths, but the print made him famous.

We learn about his struggles to be a card magician with a few other tricks, performing before small crowds at sideshows, dime museums, and small theaters. But it was his first escape trick, the "Metamorphosis" trunk escape, (purchased from another retiring magician), that the people loved. Houdini was encouraged to drop the magic and concentrate on escapes. Thus emerged highly-publicized escapes from local police cells with handcuffs. Later came the straitjacket, a simpler escape for him but one he dramatized by hanging upside down over rivers or audiences. 

"The secret of showmanship consists not in what you really do, but what the mystery-loving public thinks you do." [Harry Houdini]

Houdini had an insatiable hunger to be the most famous man in the world. Posnanski details this climb to the top and then the ever-increasing pressure to create newer, more dangerous escapes on never-ending tours around the world. En route, Houdini took it upon himself to expose fortune-tellers and mediums he considered fakes duping the public, including his boyhood hero, Robert-Houdin himself. We also learn about the escape-proof Mirror Cuffs specially designed to foil Houdini which they did for agonizing minutes on stage. He did finally master these cuffs, but since that one performance no one has ever been able to open the cuffs without their huge key.

Houdini wanted to bring real danger -- or at least the appearance of real danger -- to magic....The water Torture Cell is more than a magic trick. Houdini understood this. It attacks our inner feelings. It steals our basic needs for air and freedom. It touches something deep inside us today, just as it did one hundred years ago, just as it will one hundred years from now.

Posnanski also interviews current magicians and Houdini scholars to hear their stories and view their collections of Houdini materials and resources, including museums, books and films by Houdini himself, as well as elusive scholarly books that expose his tricks and techniques. Thankfully, Posnanski refuses to reveal any of Houdini's secrets (except for one which he gives readers plenty of opportunity to flip ahead and not read a potential deflating solution to a difficult problem).

The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini is a wonderful look at America and its people in the early years of the twentieth century. But it is Houdini himself that still captures the imagination with his larger than life persona, dreams, and exploits. A fascinating book about a unique performer, well worth anyone's time interested in magic, self-promotion, early American life, and the individual who brought to the public all these elements in one glorious package. 

Good magic sneaks up on you and finds the secret passage to the part of you that knows this is bullshit. It sweeps your mental supports out from under you for a moment and reminds you that the essential nature of life is mystery.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Gold, Glen David. Carter Beats the Devil.   

One of my all-time favorite books. Historical fiction about the famous magician Charles Carter, his life and love, and his possible involvement and subsequent disappearance after a performance where President Harding mysteriously died. Highly recommended (previously reviewed here)

Steinmeyer, Jim The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the Marvelous Chinese Conjurer  

The incredibly true story of a white man who masqueraded as a mysteriously silent oriental magician his entire career. Wonderfully talented, he died on the stage when an illusion when wrong. Captivating read. (previously reviewed here)

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Vowell, Sarah. The Partly Cloudy Patriot. New York: Simon & Schuster 2002. Print

First Sentences:

There are children playing soccer on a field at Gettysburg where the Union Army lost the first day's fight. 

Description:

First things first. If you're wondering, as I was, about what the title meant in Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, just think Thomas Paine. Remember the lines, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country."

Author Sarah Vowell is a self-proclaimed history buff with a taste for the quirky. Take her book Assassination Vacation for example where she researched and then visited scenes significant to assassinated US presidents. She is certainly not a "sunshine patriot," but instead digs deep into the behind-the-scenes stories to uncover all sides of historical events. But she can also take a skepical view of government, thus branding herself a "partially cloudy patriot." Got it?

The Partly Cloudy Patriot is  a series of nineteen random essays about observations from her life. Her highly interesting musings range from the Gettysburg Address to ancient maps depicting California as an island, and the glories of Pop-A-Shot basketball (which Vowell is very good at). There's an essay about presidential libraries, people who compare themselves to Rosa Parks, a Salem witch trials souvenir shot glass, Canadian Mounties, and Tom Cruise (who makes her nervous). In other words, a completely delightful potpourri of topics all cleverly and wryly written.

Here's just a few samples:

• I was enjoying a chocolaty caffe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history on the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it costs so much.

• [on voting] I love it in there. I drag it out, leisurely punching the names I want as if sipping whiskey in front of a fire. I mean, how many times in a life does an average person get to make history?

• [on Tom Cruise] Cruise's face is too angular to be sensual....His face reminds me more of a math problem than a love poem, the nose and chin right out of high school geometry, hard vectors of flesh. Picasso might have liked to paint him, though it would have been too easy.

• [on Canadians] All these nice people, seemingly normal but for the hockey obsession, had a likable knack for loving their country in public without resorting to swagger or hate

So now you are either intrigued and laughing (as I was) by Vowell's insights into our world or ready to move on to another book. For me, Vowell is an author I plan to read a lot more. She's clever, insightful, humorous, self-deprecating, and finds interesting tidbits in everything she encounters - and  is more than willing to share her thoughts with us, much to our benefit.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation.   

Vowell researches and then visits the important sites relating to the assassinations of three presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and offers insightful and humorous comments on the event itself and people behind these histories. As delightfully witty as it is informative.