The World's Fastest Man

Kranish, Michael. The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero New York: Simon and Schuster 2019. Print.

First Sentences:

 

On the clear, brisk Saturday afternoon of December 5, 1896, an unusual pair of men strode to New York City's Madison Square Garden, where thousands would soon assemble for one of the era's greatest sporting events.

Description:

On a bike path near my house is a plaque detailing the life and sports achievements of Marshall "Major" Taylor, a Black bicycle racer in the 1890s - early 1900s era. I had never heard of him and, after reading some of the details of his achievements, just had to explore the story behind this man. This quest led me to Michael Kranish's The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero,

Just to set the scene for you. Imagine for a moment the world of the 1880s: no radio, no television, no automobiles, no airplanes, not even everyday bicycles. The Penny-Farthing bike had just been introduced, the one with a gigantic front wheel and a tiny wheel in the back. There were extremely popular as the fastest form of transportation available. Women were allowed to ride them in public as well.

This was also the age of the US Supreme Court's Plessy vs. Fergeson decision, the "separate but equal" discrimination case that would usher in the Jim Crow attitude and laws of prejudice and ill-treatment of minorities nationwide.

Marshall Taylor at that time was a poor Black child growing up in Indianopolis. His father had secured a job as a carriage driver for a wealthy White family, and Marshall accompanied him because the family had a similarly-age boy in need of a playmate. 

Taylor became part of that family, receiving the environment, food, education, and gifts exactly as his rich friend received. One gift was a new bicycle which Taylor soon mastered, perfecting trick-riding as well.

It was Mark Twain who, after describing his many crashes as he learned to ride a high-wheeler, wrote: "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live."

Taylor secured a position at a local bicycle shop. Hundreds of these design/sales/repair shophad sprung up across the country, including the Wright brothers who started designing bicycles abd later flying machines in their own shop. While performing tricks at the shop to attract customers, decked out in a military-style jacket, Taylor received the nickname "Marshall."

There, Taylor was noticed by a world champion professional rider, Louis de Franklin "Birdie" Munger, once the fastest bicyclist in the world. Munger, near the end of his competition days, took Taylor under his wing and introduced him to Munger's own experimental bicycle with equal-sized, inflatable tires. 

Munger trained Taylor and entered him in his first race at age 18, much to the surprise of Taylor who did not know he would be competing that day. Incredibly, Taylor won and his career as a competitive bicylist began.

These are just the first few pages of this incredible story of Taylor, a poverty-stricken Black youth who, at the turn of the century and duting the birth and mania for bicycles, competed and won sprint (1/2 - 1 miles) races all over the country and world to attract the attention and paying spectators to his competitions. 

Of course, he experienced jealous riders, bigotry, and the pitfalls of travel and riches. Taylor devoted himself to new physical fitness and weight training exercises, and embraced a highly restricted diet, training techniques unknown in that era. On top of everything else, he promised his church deacons he would never race on Sundays. He even had to overcome his frequent failure to properly count his laps, often pulling up thinking he had won the race when he still had a lap or two to go, and had to sprint to catch up to the field and win.

Taylor's competitors made him a marked man, cutting him off, trying to knock over his bike, hoping to make him crash at full speed. Taylor soon realized that every time he went on the track his life was endangered.

But what a story author Kranish presents us, full of hope, frustration, inspiration, danger, and challenges of bicycle racing in those days, along with a well-researched description of society, the evolution of bicycles, and the eventual entrance of the automobile. 

Journey back in time to follow one forgotten man's rise to international fame on a two-wheeled contraption. It is well worth your time.

 

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

  

Krabb, Tim. The Rider  

Fascinating modern memoir of an Irish bicycle racer who carefully details his thoughts, strategies, competitor evaluation, and dreams throughout several arduous races. (Soon to be reviewed.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Library

Kells, Stuart. The Library: A Catalog of Wonders. Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint 2017. Print.

First Sentences:

If a library can be something as simple as an organized collection of texts, then libraries massively pre-date books in the history of culture. Every country has a tradition of legends, parables, riddles, myths and chants that existed long before they were written down. Warehoused as memories, these texts passed from generation to generation through dance, gestures, and word of mouth.


Description:

Many of you know me as someone who loves books about books, whether book reviews, authors, libraries, collectors, dictionaries, reading, even book theft. Yes, I'm all in on anything about pages and their words. 

So when I picked up Stuart Kells The Library: A Catalog of Wonders, well, sparks flew and time stood still as I dove hopelessly into its detailed history of the printed word, the famous collections, and the men and women who assembled and guarded over them until the collections were broken up, destroyed, or simply forgotten.

Author Kells, as "a young academic working glumly at a social research instutite," found at a lunchtime book sale an ancient copy of Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, published during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I of England. The book's publisher, John Fry, preserved rare books and documents from centuries past, igniting in Kells an interest in learning more about Fry publications. 

Kells soon became a bookman himself, visiting hundreds of libraries, whether public, academic, or medieval. His explorations included modest private collections like one priceless set of books "stored in a woodshed," and one belonging to a hoarder "who cut an indoor pathway to his bathtub, where his most prized possessions were kept." Kells learned:

Every library has an atmosphere, even a spirit. Every visit to a library is an encounter with the ethereal phenomena of coherence, beauty, and taste.

In The Library, Kells shares his found treasures as well as his musings about book collections. He covers the first libraries, oral histories and song lines, all of which collected and shared the earliest cultural knowledge; the mighty Alexandria library; and Benedictine monasteries whose monks devoted their lives to gathering, copying and illustrating religious works (producing large, heavy tomes like The Devil's Bible which weighed in at 74.8 kilograms). 

Kells reveals esoteric facts like the transition from clay tablets to papyrus, to parchment, to paper, and the changes required of libraries to store these various formats. Shelves had to become shorter in length and stronger to prevent sagging, and also become more uniform in height.

There are chapters on the lost libraries which suffered their complete demises via fires, floods, looting, and general neglect. It is heart-breaking to read about the early libraries which carefully collected and preserved fragile scrolls, manuscripts, and books, only to see them destroyed and the information lost forever.

Along the way we learn from the inexhautable Kells that:

• Papyrus is a terrible material for preserving texts. Without a large and unwavering commitment to conservation and copying, a library of papyrus scrolls will readily and unceremoniously disintegrate; 

• Cuneiform was written and read left to right; Arabic right to left; Chinese top to bottom; and Ancient Greek, for a time, back and forth ("boustrophedon" or "ox-turning"), like plowing a field;

• America's major libraries were doubling en size every trwenty years from the 1870s to the 1940s, and every fifteen years after that.

• Gutenberg, although almost finished the first printing of his magnificant Bible, was sued by his financial backer for proceeding too slowly. Gutenberg lost the case, had his shop and presses confiscated, and was ruined;

• The British Museum's domed reading room has secret doors. To maintain the impression  of an unbroken series of books around the walls, the dome's pillars and access doors are painted with false book-backs;

• Schusseried Abby solved the problem of untidy and uneven volumes (and the problem of damage from light) by storing its books in cabinets whose doors are painted with idealized volumes.

• Passionate about making and sailing paper boats, the poet Shelley could not resist turning [book] fly leaves -- along with letters, newspapers, and banknotes -- into little ships.

• [In 1968 at Northwestern University] a domino effect toppled twenty-seven ranges, spilling 264,000 volumes, splintering solid oad chairs, flattening steel footstools, shearing books in hald, destroying or damaging more than 8,000 volumes;

• A professor...from Ohio State University, stole pages from a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Vatican Library. The manuscript had once belonge to Petrarch.

I passed many an hour pouring over interesting chapters on "Vandals," "Book Machines," "Fantasy Libraries," "The Folger Shakespeare Library," "The Best and Worst Librarians in History," "Libraries for the Future," and "Death" (about people who died in their libraries). 

So you see there is plenty to nerd out about in Kells' wonderful book. If you are into books, collections, and the people who create (and destroy) them, then The Library is the ultimate book for you.

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

 Conaway, James. America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress 1800-2000.

History of one of the greatest libraries of the current age, The United State Library of Congress. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Penguin Lessons

Michell, Tom. The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird. New York: Ballentine 2017. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Had I been told as a child in 1950's England that my life would one day run parallel with that of a penguin -- that for a time, at least, it would be him and me against the world -- I would have taken it in stride. After all, my mother had kept three alligators at the house in Esher until they grew too big and too dangerous for that genteel town and keepers from Chessington Zoo came to remove them. 

Description:

Probably never does a movie even come close to the quality and depth of the book on which it is based. Films in my mind that are closest to achieving a similar level of quality as their book, in my mind, might be To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck and The Martian with Matt Damon. While these films can't plum the full depth and characterization possible in the books, they do convey the storyline, the tension, the emotion, and the overall impact. More importantly, they encourage movie-watchers like me to seek out the original source material book to answer questions, fill in gaps, and follow tangents only hinted at in the film.

After recently watching the film The Penguin Lesson with Steve Coogan, it tickled my interest enough that I really wanted to read author Tom Michell's own words about his escapades with a South American penguin. Lo and behold, in our local library I found a copy of The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird. I plunged right in and was quickly absorbed into his homey narration.

In 1975, author Michell was an assistant master and resident at an exclusive boy's school in Argentina. While on a vacation in Uruguay and walking along a beach, he noticed hundreds of dark lumps on the shore. These turned out to be dead penguins, recently migrating northward now covered with oil from unloading tankers and washed ashore. Shocked at the sight, he looked closer and found one that was still alive. As he approached it, the penguin, oil-slicked and weak, boldly stood up to defend itself.

Michell decided to try to save it by washing off the oil, capturing the 10lb bird in a string grocery bag and cleaning it in the home where he was house-sitting. Definitely not an easy task, nor a very clean one.

But after the penguin (later named "Juan Salvado") calmed down and allowed Michell to fully remove the oil, the author tried to return it to the ocean. To his surprise, the penguin immediately waddled away from the shore, determined to follow Mitchell wherever he went. 

After several more unsuccessful attempts to set it free, and due to a growing respect and love for this bird, Michell decides keep the bird until he can take it to a zoo. But he first must sneak the penguin back to the Argentine boy's school with him. This ridiculous journey involves adventures with buses and trains, customs inspections, feeding, and of course some very smelly pooping (by the penguin).

This is the action of the first few pages, so I am not giving much away. From here on in, Michell recounts decision after decision he faced about the penguin's food, water, exercise, secrecy, and of course what to do when Michell is away from his apartment teaching and Juan Salvado is left alone. 

We also get glimpses of the people and life in a small town and school in Juan Peron's politically unstable Argentina. Inflation was 100% per month, so Michell was told to spend his entire  paycheck the same day he received it, buying things he didn't even need so he could re-sell them from the school. Otherwise, his money would decrease by 50% the next day.

We meet the people who enter the penguin's life: the school's head of housekeeping who befriends Juan Salvado as one of the students needing her care; the local fisherman who sold Michell the small sprat fish for Juan Salvador; and the school boys who after learning there is a penguin living with a teacher on their grounds, they adopt as a mascot, friend, and confidant. The chapter where a shy, outcast school boy swims with Juan Salvado is absolutely first rate.

The book is delightful, heart-warming, and overall fun to read. Juan Salvado is a star in his new land-locked life, carefully integrated into the lives of every person he encounters. I loved it and hope you find it equally satisfying ...much more so than even that very good movie version of his adventures.

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

  

Montgomery, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus..   

Fascinating up close encounter, study, and even friendship between the author and an aquarium octopus. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Game

Kramer, Jack and Deford, Frank. The Game: My 40 years in Tennis. New York: Putnam 1979. Print.

First Sentences:

 

While I have spent a great deal of my life traveling -- and still do, to my wife's annoyance -- I live a very settled life in many respects. 

Description:

Since attending the Tennis Hall of Fame ceremony last summer at the classic tennis casino in Newport, Rhode Island, my interest has been peaked about the history of tennis, especially the early days of the original rag-tag pro tours and the evolution to Open tournaments. To satisfy my curiosity I went right to the source: writing by the men who led the first pro circuits and eventually championed the switch to Open tennis (where pros could play with amateurs in Grand Slam and other tournaments). Those two men were Jack Kramer (early professional player and pro tour organizer) and Richard Evans (writer, mover and shaker for Open tennis - a link to his book is below). 

 

I started with Jack Kramer (with Frank Deford) and his fascinating, insightful, cocky, and thoughtful account of his life as one of the first tennis professionals, The Game: My 40 Years in Tennis. The famous names of tennis legend just flow out of his story-telling, some familiar and some relatively unknown today. Pancho Gonzales, Bobby Riggs, Don Budge, John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Rod Laver, and Ken Rosewall I knew about. Figures lesser remembered by me, but still great players are fleshed out  by Kramer as his worthy playing opponents and friends: Ellsworth Vines, Pancho Segura, Bitsy Grant, Bob Falkenberg, Gussy Moran, Helen Wills Moody, Pauline Betz Addie, Frank Parker, Fred Perry, and Gardnar Mulloy. Don't worry if you don't recognize some of these players either; Kramer will help you picture them as he weaves them into tournament and travel stories throughout his captivating memoir. And he carefully analyzes them all. And in the end, he lets you know who was the best (besides himself): Don Budge.

It's difficulty to compare players you did see in their prime. But then it's difficult to compare players you did see in their prime, because rarely did two of the best have their best years at the same time 

Kramer played them all. In his amateur days at the L.A. Tennis Club, he developed a serve-and-volley power game, learning to play strategic, percentage tennis which involved using strong forehand and backhand strokes, conserving energy, and never losing his serve. It was "a man's game" as he called it, while his amateur opponents played a more conservative "boy's game." Kramer won ten Grand Slam men's singles, doubles, and mixed titles in the U.S. Championship (now The Open) and Wimbledon from 1941-47, as well as led the U.S to Davis Cup victories in 1946 and '47.

 

At that time, top amateurs survived on appearance money paid under the table by the tournament promoters to assure a good field of players which would attract paying customers.

In the winter the best a top player could make was about $400 a week in Florida...for a good Texas tournament the Number 1 player might get $750, and for the Pacific Southwest in L.A....the top could draw as much as $1,200. 

With no other goals to conquer after winning Wimbledon for the second time and seeking to be paid for his tennis efforts, Kramer joined Riggs' tour of professionals after being offered $50,000 guaranteed or 35% of the gate receipts. The book then focuses on these fledgling tour pros, their lives on the road, the competitions and rugged conditions they faced each night, the uncertain finances, and the players' subsequent ostracization from all major tournaments because they were now paid professionals, not amateurs.

 

Since he played against them all, Kramer is perfectly suited to analyze the major players of that era, both professional and amateur: their personalities, strengths and weaknesses of their games, and the demands on their mental capabilities of grueling competition. For example, he comments on the great Spaniard Alex Olmedo, a dominate figure in the amateurs:

Then Olmedo signed with me, and he could hardly win a set. All of a sudden, from the top of the world to being a stiff -- number nine or ten out of twelve players on the tour...Nothing in the world prepares you for losing day in and day out, and surely it is a hundred times worse to be losing every time when just last week you were the champion. It tears you apart. 

Later, as the Executive Director of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Kramer oversaw the 1973 boycott of Wimbledon, which, in his words, was "the only time in the history of any sport...where the players have boycotted the world championship." This event led to the open tennis era, where previous futile efforts to get the best (pro) players in the same tournament as the amateurs had failed.

 

He also has strong opinions on such wide-ranging topics as:

• The Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs - "Riggs...figured [after he beat Margaret Court] he could beat any of the dames without training...he completely miscalculated Billie Jean, who has always risen to the occasion; 
   
• World Team Tennis - Could never succeed on the grand scale it sought because tennis is too much an individual sport; (Note: Riggs and Kramer tried to form a similar WTT league in 1950, but "arena owners had no interest since there were not enough name pros to stock a league.")

• The then-new metal racquets - A marketing advance, not a competitive one;

• Practice techniques - Kids today never practice to improve their weaknesses, What they call practice is really just warming up.

It's a fantastic book, full of tennis history, personalities, competition, and opinions from the man who lived them during those early professional days. Highly recommended for anyone interested in any aspect of tennis and the people who shaped in on and off the court. 

 

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

  

Evans, Richard. Open Tennis: The First Twenty Years, the Players, the Politics, the Pressures, the Passions, and the Great Matches

   

Inside view from Evans (who was a key participant) about the background, negotiations, administrators, directors, and players involved with making tennis tournaments open to professionals and amateurs alike.

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Special Post - Sources for Books

Situation: 

I was asked by friends recently where I find my eclectic assortment of interesting books. They, too, want to identify not just something popular from the list of New York Times Bestsellers. They would like ongoing resources to consistently dangle titles in front of them, books which are quality reads with interesting characters and challenging, funny, or transporting plots. They want something out of the ordinary, something they actually will look forward to picking up and reading. 

 
My Solution:
 

Four years ago I wrote a Special Post - Resources for Finding Great Books, but now need to update the electronic newsletters portion. Below are some free email newsletters chock full of brilliant, quirky, and certainly tempting books that I use to learn about new and old titles. 

 

These free book review lists below may appear daunting in number, but don't worry. You can just skim their postings and book lists as you wish, usually a very quick process for me. 

 

Just give them your email address and sit back to watch your In-box fill up with titles and quality reviews of books soon to be published, currently under the radar, classics from the past, and loads of other book-related articles. It's exciting to have emails come into you life almost daily with enticing books to pursue. I read the first sentences of books that interest me using library copies or through the Amazon "Look Inside" link to the book's first pages. Easy to judge quickly and winnow down to the ones that really interest me by my quirky standards. You can do it too.

 

Happy reading.

Fred 

Click here to browse over 465 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

_______________________________________________________________________

Free Book Review Newsletters
(Click on any title to read more and sign up for email postings)

BookBrowse

This newsletter from librarians also provides a longer list of titles with reviews than other book sites, but these books all seem deliciously enticing due to the quality of synopsis and praise they receive. 

 

Booklist

My most-used go-to list to discover top notch list of book recommendations from librarians, often before they are available to the public. Often organized by themes (Thrillers, Non-Fiction, Book Clubs, Romance, etc.). 

Book Marks

Literary Hub's site for book excellent book reviews on a huge variety of topics.

 

BookPage 

Extensive list and reviews from readers as well as some libraries of books they are currently reading. Print copies are usually available in public libraries.

 

The Cottage Bookshop

Probably the newsletter I most look forward to, this monthly posting covers books I usually haven't heard of, yet are always intriguing.

First Look Book Club

Brief excerpts for about-to-be-published books from Random House.

 

Gramercy Books

Have to put in a plug for my local indie bookstore here in Columbus, Ohio, Gramercy Books. Always something interesting to suggest in the way of book titles, gifts, author events, and an overall general good feeling about reading and books.

 

The Guardian Bookmarks

Great reviews of newer books, plus lots of general book-related commentary, articles, links, and discussion. Very good site to stimulate loads of ideas and thoughts.

 

LibraryReads Newsletter

Top ten books of the week that "library staff across the country love." What could be better?

LitHub Weekly 

Very extensive, eclectic, and sophisticated newsletter chock full of articles, essays, book recommendations, and other book-related items. 

 

New York Times Newsletter

Still a great resource for new books, but the newsletter contains many more articles, interviews with authors, and general book-related items.

NPR Books Newsletter  

Fewer book recommendations but great reviews, articles, and comments from NPR readers.

 

Penguin Books Newsletter

From the UK is this unique newsletter reviewing books, offering author interviews, and links to fascinating articles of literary and unusual book-themed nature.

 

RJ Julia Just the Right Book

This tiny but completely well-stocked bookshop in Connecticut is world famous for having a great selection of books. Of course, their newsletter introduces readers to wonderful books and gifts from their store.

Shelf Awareness 

The top twenty-five books of the week as selected by book dealers, publishers, and librarians. Also includes author interviews, games, and links to reviews for unusual books, book-related articles and events of the week. (Sent twice weekly, but isn't overwhelming).

 

Simon & Schuster Books

Extensive list of books from the publisher with high-quality reviews. Also, you get a free e-book when you sign up for this newsletter.  Woo-Hoo!

Vintage Books

A offshoot of Penguin Books, this newsletter offers more obscure books that have proved to be delightful reads for me.

 

The Washington Post Book Club

Lengthy, but not overpowering, list of book recommendations for highly interesting titles, articles, and author interviews. Very well-written in all aspects. Need a subscription to the WP, but I use the newsletter to get ideas of up-and-coming, high-quality books