There's no way a little thing like losing his hand will keep Norm from trying out for baseball.

Journey with prolific author and avid baseball fan Ethan Bryan on an exciting quest to play catch every day for a year, and discover the lessons he learned about the sacredness of play, finding connections, and being fully present to the human experience. Ethan Bryan played and wrote about baseball for years. Then his daughters challenged him to set out on a yearlong experiment: to play catch with someone every day. This experience led him across 10 states and 12,000 miles on a quest both quixotic and inspiring. Taking you from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to the home of the Daytona Tortugas in Florida, Bryan played ball and swapped stories with public school teachers, veterans, journalists, nurses, musicians, entertainers, entrepreneurs, athletes from every level--amateur to pro--and members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Plus, he visited famous destinations such as the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Miracle League fields, and the original "Field of Dreams" in Iowa. But throughout the book, Bryan reveals it's about much more than who he played catch with: it's what he learned from their vastly different stories. Lessons include: How play can reignite a fire within you and transform your life How to find joy in the simple things How one life can impact a whole community . . . and more. For baseball fans and everyone who loves a good story, A Year of Playing Catch is an inspiring journey about finding joy in the simple things, and the power of play to transform our lives.

Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Creative Homeowner,

“Eagle, a chef and food writer, uses a nine-dish lunch as the occasion to ruminate about cooking, and life” (New York Times Book Review). First, Catch is a cookbook without recipes, an invitation to journey through the digressive mind of a chef at work, and a hymn to a singular nine-dish festive spring lunch. In Eagle’s kitchen, open shelves reveal colorful jars of vegetables pickling over the course of months, and a soffritto of onions, celery, and carrots cook slowly under a watchful gaze in a skillet heavy enough to double as a murder weapon. Eagle has both the sharp eye of a food scientist as he tries to identify the seventeen unique steps of boiling water, as well as of that of a roving food historian as he ponders what the spice silphium tasted like to the Romans, who over-ate it to worldwide extinction. He is a tour guide to the world of ingredients, a culinary explorer, and thoughtful commentator on the ways immigration, technology, and fashion has changed the way we eat. He is also a food philosopher, asking the question: at what stage does cooking begin? Is it when we begin to apply heat or acid to ingredients? Is it when we gather and arrange what we will cook—and perhaps start to salivate? Or does it start even earlier, in the wandering late-morning thought, “What should I eat for lunch?” Irreverent and charming, yet also illuminating and brilliantly researched, First, Catch encourages us to slow down and focus on what it means to cook. With this astonishing and beautiful book, Thom Eagle joins the ranks of great food writers like M.F.K. Fisher, Alice Waters, and Samin Nosrat in offering us inspiration to savor, both in and out of the kitchen. Winner of the Fortnum and Mason’s Debut Food Book Award Shortlisted for the 2018 Andre Simon Food & Drink Book of the Year BBC Radio 4 Food Programme Best Foodbooks of 2018 Times Best Food Books of 2018 Financial Times Summer Food Books of 2018 “A contemplation of cooking and eating, a return to the great tradition of food writing inspired by M.F.K. Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me . . . Eagle writes with a wit and sharpness that can turn a chapter on fermenting pickles into a riff on death and decay while still making it seem like something you would like to put in your mouth.” —Mark Haskell Smith, Los Angeles Times “In two dozen short chapters linked like little sausages, he serves up a bounty of fresh, often tart opinions about food and cooking . . . Eagle is a natural teacher; his enthusiasm and broad view of food preparation is both instructive and inspiring . . . Eagle’s prose, while conversational in tone, is as crafted and layered as his cuisine. Never bland, it is also brightly seasoned with strong opinions . . . Rare among food writing, this book is bound to change the way you think about your next meal.” —Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor

In 1870s London, a young orphan girl becomes the apprentice to a man who traps monsters for a living.

"A wonderful memoir ... hands down the most charming book I read last year."--Margaret Renkl, The New York Times A country gardener explores his kinship with the natural world in this heartwarming, human book where "each page is filled with love, regret, humility and a sense of wonder (and oneness) with nature" (Washington Post). Marc Hamer is a humble gardener with the heart of a poet and the mind of a philosopher. In this peaceful memoir, he shares how, from boyhood into old age, he has lived with, and not against, nature. How his proximity to soil, sun, and shade has unleashed the greatest joys and profoundest sorrows of his life. And how our humanity is inextricably linked to the natural world, so we should have the good sense to leave it alone. In simple, striking sentences, Marc offers a kind of poetic field guide to living in nature. He shares memories of childhood homelessness, his own poetry, wisdom about plants, and vivid descriptions of the garden he works in daily. He tells of flowers that are planted, bloom, and then die, of trees that burst into color, and of moles who burrow below pristine lawns. As a hired gardener, he has hunted moles for decades, but now he decides to let them be. Like him, moles do their work in the soil. Allowing them to continue is allowing all life to flourish. Beautifully written, life-affirming, and meditative, How to Catch a Mole is a portrait of one man's unshakable bond with his natural surroundings, offering hope and inspiration for readers looking to reconnect to nature, to each other, and to life itself.

Maisie 'Danger' Brown needs excitement. When she wins a harmless-sounding competition to go to astronaut boot camp, that's exactly what she gets . . . But she never imagined it would feature stumbling into a terrifying plot that kills her friends and might just kill her too. Now there's no going back. Maisie has to live by her middle name if she wants to survive – and she'll need to be equally courageous to untangle the romance in her life too. A clever, suspenseful thriller-adventure by New York Times bestselling author and master storyteller Shannon Hale.

In time for the 50th anniversary of the Mets' miraculous 1969 World Series win, right fielder Ron Swoboda tells the story of that amazing season, the people he played with and against (sometimes at the same time), and what life was like as an Every Man ballplayer. Ron Swoboda wasn’t the greatest player the Mets ever had, but he made the greatest catch in Met history, saving a game in the 1969 World Series, and his RBI clinched the final game. By Met standards that makes him legend. The Mets even use a steel silhouette of the catch as a backing for the right field entrance sign at Citi Field. In this smart, funny, insightful memoir, which is as self-deprecating as a lifetime .249 hitter has to be, he tells the story of that magical year nearly game by game, revealing his struggles, his triumphs and what life was like for an every day, Every Man player, even when he was being platooned. He shows what it took to make one of the worst teams in baseball and what it was like to leave one of the best. And when he talks about the guys he played with and against, it’s like you’re sitting next to him on the team bus, drinking Rheingold. Here's the Catch is a book anyone who loves the game will love as much.

The first-ever cultural, tactical and historical history of the goalkeeper, by Jonathan Wilson, acclaimed author of INVERTING THE PYRAMID.

A controversial examination of the internal Israeli debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a best-selling Israeli author Since the Six-Day War, Israelis have been entrenched in a national debate over whether to keep the land they conquered or to return some, if not all, of the territories to Palestinians. In a balanced and insightful analysis, Micah Goodman deftly sheds light on the ideas that have shaped Israelis' thinking on both sides of the debate, and among secular and religious Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Contrary to opinions that dominate the discussion, he shows that the paradox of Israeli political discourse is that both sides are right in what they affirm—and wrong in what they deny. Although he concludes that the conflict cannot be solved, Goodman is far from a pessimist and explores how instead it can be reduced in scope and danger through limited, practical steps. Through philosophical critique and political analysis, Goodman builds a creative, compelling case for pragmatism in a dispute where a comprehensive solution seems impossible.