A biography of Charles A. Stoneham's years owning and running the New York Giants in the 1920s.

Before John Was a Jazz Giant is a 2009 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book.

An award-winning historian surveys the astonishing cast of characters who helped turn Manhattan into the world capital of commerce, communication and entertainment --

2022 SABR Seymour Medal Finalist for the 2021 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year When New York Giants owner Charles A. Stoneham came home one night in 1918 and told his teenage son, Horace, "Horrie, I bought you a ballclub," he set in motion a family legacy. Horace Stoneham would become one of baseball's greatest figures, an owner who played an essential role in integrating the game, and who was a major force in making our pastime truly national by bringing Major League Baseball to the West Coast. Horace Stoneham began his tenure with the Giants in 1924, learning all sides of the operation until he moved into the front office. In 1936, when his father died of kidney disease, Horace assumed control of the Giants at age thirty-two, becoming one of the youngest owners in baseball history. Stoneham played a pivotal role in not just his team's history but the game itself. In the mid-1940s when the Pacific Coast League sought to gain Major League status, few but Stoneham and Branch Rickey took it seriously, and twelve years later the Giants and Dodgers were the first two teams to relocate west. Stoneham signed former Negro Leaguers Monte Irvin and Hank Thompson, making the Giants the second National League franchise to racially integrate. In the late 1940s, the Giants hired their first Spanish-speaking scout and soon became the leading team in developing Latin American players. Stoneham was shy and self-effacing and avoided the spotlight. His relationships with players were almost always strong, yet for all his leadership skills and baseball acumen, sustained success eluded most of his teams. In forty seasons his Giants won just five National League pennants and only one World Series. The Stoneham family business struggled, and the team was forced to sell off its beloved stars, first Willie Mays, then Willie McCovey, and finally Juan Marichal. Then Stoneham had no choice but to sell the club in 1975. While his tenure came to an unfortunate end, he is heralded as a pioneer and leader whose story tells much of baseball history from the 1930s through the 1970s.

Chicago in the Roaring Twenties was a city of immigrants, mobsters, and flappers with one shared passion: the Chicago Cubs. It all began when the chewing-gum tycoon William Wrigley decided to build the world’s greatest ball club in the nation’s Second City. In this Jazz Age center, the maverick Wrigley exploited the revolutionary technology of broadcasting to attract eager throngs of women to his renovated ballpark. Mr. Wrigley’s Ball Club transports us to this heady era of baseball history and introduces the team at its crazy heart—an amalgam of rakes, pranksters, schemers, and choirboys who take center stage in memorable successes, equally memorable disasters, and shadowy intrigue. Readers take front-row seats to meet Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Joe McCarthy, Lewis “Hack” Wilson, Gabby Hartnett. The cast of characters also includes their colorful if less-extolled teammates and the Cubs’ nemesis, Babe Ruth, who terminates the ambitions of Mr. Wrigley’s ball club with one emphatic swing.

The true giants of jazz are remembered in these brief biographies of thirteen jazz musicians. Now reissued in the original illustrated edition, the stars portrayed include John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday & Fats Waller.

Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction An electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes. And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.

Adventures of a Jazz Age Lawyer is the lively story of legal giant Nathan Burkan, whose career encapsulated the coming of age of the institutions, archetypes, and attitudes that define American popular culture. With a client list that included Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson, Frank Costello, Victor Herbert, Mae West, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, Arnold Rothstein, and Samuel Goldwyn, Burkan was “New York’s Spotlight Lawyer” for more than three decades. He was one of the principal authors of the epochal Copyright Act of 1909 and the guiding spirit behind the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (Ascap), which provided the first practical means for songwriters to collect royalties for public performances of their works, revolutionizing the music business and the sound of popular music. While the entertainment world adapted to the disruptive technologies of recorded sound, motion pictures, and broadcasting, Burkan’s groundbreaking work laid the legal foundation for the Great American Songbook and the Golden Age of Hollywood, and it continues to influence popular culture today. Gary A. Rosen tells stories of dramatic and uproarious courtroom confrontations, scandalous escapades of the rich and famous, and momentous clashes of powerful political, economic, and cultural forces. Out of these conflicts, the United States emerged as the world’s leading exporter of creative energy. Adventures of a Jazz Age Lawyer is an engaging look at the life of Nathan Burkan, a captivating history of entertainment and intellectual property law in the early twentieth century, and a rich source of new discoveries for anyone interested in the spirit of the Jazz Age.

“On some days your dreams may seem too far away to realize… Listen to the whispers of those that came before...” People throughout history have taken giant steps toward improving the world—but even the smallest step makes a difference. A wonderful and inspiring gift, Giant Steps to Change the World encourages readers to follow in the footsteps of those who came before, to reject fears of inadequacy, and to ponder what they can contribute to society.