I just started this. Great author, great subject.

Kahn is better than nearly anyone in placing great athletes within the context of their times. HOF'er.

Kahn's The Boy's of Summer is arguably the greatest baseball book ever written. I'd put it right up there alongside Glory of Their Times and the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.

Just finished Cold Hand in Mine (1975) by Robert Aickman, which means I've now read every "strange tale" he published. This collection includes his very best story, "The Hospice," and one other excellent one, "The Swords," but most of the other entries ranged from okay to frustratingly vague.

Posted by crazystengel on 6/13/2019 3:26:00 PM (view original):
Kahn's The Boy's of Summer is arguably the greatest baseball book ever written. I'd put it right up there alongside Glory of Their Times and the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.

Just finished Cold Hand in Mine (1975) by Robert Aickman, which means I've now read every "strange tale" he published. This collection includes his very best story, "The Hospice," and one other excellent one, "The Swords," but most of the other entries ranged from okay to frustratingly vague.

Or maybe inarguably. One of the greatest sports books of any kind ever written. Some of my favorite sports books, in no particular order --

The Boys of Summer Roger Kahn
Friday Night Lights Buzz Bissinger
Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer
The Natural Bernard Malamud
Shoeless Joe W.P. Kinsella
A Fan's Notes Frederick Exley
King of the World David Remnick
Fat City Leonard Gardner
Death in the Afternoon Ernest Hemingway
The Summer Game Roger Angell
North Dallas Forty Peter Gent
The Game Ken Dryden
The Sweet Science A.J. Liebling
Everybody's All American Frank Deford
The Fight Norman Mailer
Ball Four Jim Bouton
Annapurna Maurice Herzog
The Harder They Fall Budd Schulberg
Fever Pitch Nick Hornsby
Summer of `49 David Halberstam
A Season on the Brink John Feinstein
Moneyball Michael Lewis
Beyond A Boundary CLR James
Veeck as in Wreck Bill Veeck
Everest: The West Ridge Thomas Hornbein

Read about half of those from your list, thunder, and I can't disagree on any being great. I'll add a few baseball books not yet mentioned:

The Armchair Book of Baseball (Vol. 1 and 2) edited by John Thorn
Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin
The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell
Cobb Would Have Caught It: The Golden Age of Baseball in Detroit edited by Richard Bak
Babe: The Legend Comes to Life By Robert Creamer
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy
Charlie O. and the Angry A's by Bill Libby
The Teammates by David Halberstam
Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life by Richard Ben Cramer
The Long Season by Jim Brosnan
Nice Guys Finish Last by Leo Durocher
John McGraw by Charles C. Alexander
Cobb: A Biography by Al Stump (entertaining, even if largely BS -- just read it as fiction)
The Bronx Zoo by Sparky Lyle (featuring Lou Piniella, stealth own-hair sniffer)
Baseball When The Grass Was Real by Donald Honig (Glory of Their Times-style oral history that includes Billy Herman recounting the crazy brawl between teammate Hugh Casey and Ernest Hemingway!)

All worthy additions. I've read most of the ones you've listed. The Creamer biography of The Babe and the Cramer biography of DiMaggio should have been on my list, as should the Jane Leavy book on Koufax, one of the underrated classics of baseball literature. You've inspired me to read The Teammates (didn't realize there was a Halberstam book on baseball I had missed) and Mike Sowell's book on Carl Mays.

And just for the heck of it, here are a few of the worst books ever written on baseball -- Bang The Drum Slowly (treacly and maudlin), Men At Work (pretentious, opaque and almost unreadable -- hard to believe its author ever won a Pultizer Prize for anything) and Eight Men Out (well written and hailed as a classic, but subsequent reporting has found most of it to be dreadfully wrong!)

on wings of eagles - i read this years ago.......mentioning it because ross perot passed away.......this amazing book was a history book written by ken follett.....who gave it thrills.......took place in 1963....against all odds.ross perot got 2 of his employees extricated from iran where they were being held......a true life thriller that will make you respect ross perot no matter what you think of his politics.
fly on wings of eagles.

Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer

great! its like a kafka novel written by a beat poet

On The Road, Naked Lunch and Last Exit to Brooklyn all in the same vein.

Posted by thunder1008 on 7/12/2019 3:26:00 AM (view original):
On The Road, Naked Lunch and Last Exit to Brooklyn all in the same vein.

i think On the Road nails it

the unexpurgated

empty in the belly and the pocket

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

it's a comedy!

if you ain read Melville & O'Brian you will struggle

my understanding is they get to dry land at some point and draw the Pennsylvania Maryland line

west on a latitude come hill or dale

but i'm only on page 50 of 800

right now they're a couple o chuckleheads at sea again

Re-reading the Flashman series, the anti-hero of Victorian England! What a cad!

I’ve probably mentioned this series before but for you history buffs, In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick. It’s the third of a trilogy which included Bunker Hill and Valiant Ambition, all obviously about the Revolutionary War. Valiant Ambition is one of the best war histories I’ve ever read. I’m devastated that this concludes the trilogy, but I’m excited to see what Philbrick tackles next.

I also finally picked up Lords of the Realm after reading about it in this thread - looking forward to it!

and back to our Bond convo, I read Diamonds are Forever last week; up there with Casino Royale for my favorite so far!