A Vintage Shorts Selection • Almost three decades ago, iconic and incomparable American essayist Joan Didion’s now-classic report from the Dukakis campaign trail exposed, in no uncertain terms, the complete sham that is the modern American presidential run. Writing with bite and some humor too, Didion betrays “the process”—the way in which power is exchanged and the status quo is maintained. All insiders—politicians, journalists, spin doctors—participate in a political narrative that is “designed as it is to maintain the illusion of consensus by obscuring rather than addressing actual issues.” The optics of presidential campaigns have grown ever more farcical and remote from the needs and issues most relevant to Americans’ lives, and Didion’s elegant, shrewd, and prescient commentary has never been more urgent than it is right now. An ebook short.

Whether the reader is already a baseball expert or a newcomer to the sport, this colorful, engaging volume is a comprehensive guide for any kind of reader or baseball enthusiast. It includes tips on getting and staying in shape, which helps to promote a healthier lifestyle; historical facts and images from the past one hundred years; and photos of exciting game moments featuring popular players and coaches. Readers will be captivated by the history while learning facts and strategies for playing the modern game of baseball

The Baseball Stadium Insideris the essential companion to your ballpark experience. Inside, you'll discover the features, facts, and figures that make each stadium unique. From the saltwater tank filled with live cow-nosed rays at Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay to the Ferris wheel and carousel at Comerica Park in Detroit, exciting details await you with every turn of the page. This comprehensive ballpark guide will appeal not only to fanatics of America's pastime, but novice baseball admirers as well. Have you ever been to a game and wondered about the retired numbers adorning the outfield wall? Wonder no more—The Baseball Stadium Insider explains what each of these great ballplayers did to become baseball legends. Finally, all of the incredible games that have etched themselves into baseball history over the decades are represented. Who could ever forget Game 6 of the 1975 World Series when Boston's Carlton Fisk hit his famous extra-inning home run off Fenway's left field foul pole? Or when the Cleveland Indians, down 14–2 in the seventh inning, staged one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history to defeat the Seattle Mariners? So go ahead, take yourself out to the ballgame and get to know the cathedrals of baseball.

An Insider's Guide to College Baseball Recruiting is a valuable handbook on how to prepare for college baseball and the recruiting process. Important information is shared on how a college coach views the recruiting process, how to pick a program that's right for you, the different levels of college baseball, academic/admission procedures and much, much more. Valuable insight, tips and recommendations are outlined in plain language to help you get the most out of the recruiting process!

In Beep, David Wanczyk illuminates the sport of blind baseball to show us a remarkable version of America’s pastime. With balls tricked out to squeal three times per second, and with bases that buzz, this game of baseball for the blind is both innovative and intense. And when the best beep baseball team in America, the Austin Blackhawks, takes on its international rival, Taiwan Homerun, no one’s thinking about disability. What we find are athletes playing their hearts out for a championship. Wanczyk follows teams around the world and even joins them on the field to produce a riveting inside narrative about the game and its players. Can Ethan Johnston, kidnapped and intentionally blinded as a child in Ethiopia, find a new home in beep baseball, and a spot on the all-star team? Will Taiwan’s rookie MVP Ching-kai Chen—whose superhuman feats on the field have left some veterans suspicious—keep up his incredible play? And can Austin’s Lupe Perez harness his competitive fire and lead his team to a long-awaited victory in the beep baseball world series? Beep is the first book about blind baseball.

An inside baseball memoir from the game’s first superstar, with a foreword by Chad Harbach Christy Mathewson was one of the most dominant pitchers ever to play baseball. Posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of the “Five Immortals,” he was an unstoppable force on the mound, winning at least twenty-two games for twelve straight seasons and pitching three complete-game shutouts in the 1905 World Series. Pitching in a Pinch, his witty and digestible book of baseball insights, stories, and wisdom, was first published over a hundred years ago and presents readers with Mathewson’s plainspoken perspective on the diamond of yore—on the players, the chances they took, the jinxes they believed in, and, most of all, their love of the game. Baseball fans will love to read first-hand accounts of the infamous Merkle’s Boner incident, Giants manager John McGraw, and the unstoppable Johnny Evers and to learn how much—and just how little—has really changed in a hundred years. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In this groundbreaking book, Keith Law, baseball writer for The Athletic and author of the acclaimed Smart Baseball, offers an era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in modern baseball, explaining what motivated them, what can be learned from them, and how their legacy has shaped the game. For years, Daniel Kahneman’s iconic work of behavioral science Thinking Fast and Slow has been required reading in front offices across Major League Baseball. In this smart, incisive, and eye-opening book, Keith Law applies Kahneman’s ideas about decision making to the game itself. Baseball is a sport of decisions. Some are so small and routine they become the building blocks of the game itself—what pitch to throw or when to swing away. Others are so huge they dictate the future of franchises—when to make a strategic trade for a chance to win now, or when to offer a millions and a multi-year contract for a twenty-eight-year-old star. These decisions have long shaped the behavior of players, managers, and entire franchises. But as those choices have become more complex and data-driven, knowing what’s behind them has become key to understanding the sport. This fascinating, revelatory work explores as never before the essential question: What were they thinking? Combining behavioral science and interviews with executives, managers, and players, Keith Law analyzes baseball’s biggest decision making successes and failures, looking at how gambles and calculated risks of all sizes and scales have shaped the sport, and how the game’s ongoing data revolution is rewriting decades of accepted decision making. In the process, he explores questions that have long been debated, from whether throwing harder really increases a player’s risk of serious injury to whether teams actually “overvalue” trade prospects. Bringing his analytical and combative style to some of baseball’s longest running debates, Law deepens our knowledge of the sport in this entertaining work that is both fun and deeply informative.

Incisive essays on Patty Hearst and Reagan, the Central Park jogger and the Santa Ana winds, from the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West. In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album “capture[s] the mood of America” and confirms her reputation as one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers (The New York Times). Whether dissecting the 1988 presidential campaign, exploring the commercialization of a Hollywood murder, or reporting on the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion proves that she is one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century, “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review). Highlights include “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” a portrait of the White House under the stewardship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, two “actors on location;” and “Girl of the Golden West,” a meditation on the Patty Hearst case that draws an unexpected and insightful parallel between the kidnapped heiress and the emigrants who settled California. “Sentimental Journeys” is a deeply felt study of New York media coverage of the brutal rape of a white investment banker in Central Park, a notorious crime that exposed the city’s racial and class fault lines. Dedicated to Henry Robbins, Didion’s friend and editor from 1966 until his death in 1979, After Henry is an indispensable collection of “superior reporting and criticism” from a writer on whom we have relied for more than fifty years “to get the story straight” (Los Angeles Times).

Whether the reader is already a baseball expert or a newcomer to the sport, this colorful, engaging volume is a comprehensive guide for any kind of reader or baseball enthusiast. It includes tips on getting and staying in shape, which helps to promote a healthier lifestyle; historical facts and images from the past one hundred years; and photos of exciting game moments featuring popular players and coaches. Readers will be captivated by the history while learning facts and strategies for playing the modern game of baseball

There are a lot of ways to look at a baseball season; here's one that baseball fans must have. Written by Gary Gillette, one of the game's best known analysts, The Spy: Baseball '99 will mix provocative writing and revolutionary stats to give readers an insider's view of the upcoming season. Included are 30 team essays, with projections for lineup, rotations and bullpens for 1999 and beyond; scouting reports for hot prospects; top minor leaguers and more.Beyond the teams, The Spy: Baseball '99 will go into detail on the state of the game. Ground-breaking essays by Stuart Shea and David Lawson will examine timely issues important to fans.