Rebecca T. Alpert’s OUT OF LEFT FIELD: JEWS AND BLACK BASEBALL is a gem of a history book: a concise, fascinating account of a significant American cultural element, black baseball, and an exploration of one particular aspect of that element, the interactions and attitudes — both real and perceived — between Jews, blacks, black Jews and their audiences, and what it meant to identify oneself along those lines in the mid-20th-century United States.
At first glance, you might think it’s one of those dreary academic tomes that sprout from moribund Gender Studies departments, complete with confusing jargon and tremendous amounts of moral outrage. But Alpert is better than this. She doesn’t try to be encyclopedic about the numerous black baseball leagues.
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Southern California-based journalist Nicholas Schou’s ORANGE SUNSHINE, now out in paperback, tells the fantastic but true story of how a group of small-time thugs were transformed by drug-induced spiritual awakenings and set out to essentially turn on the entire world — along the way becoming the most successful and sophisticated drug cartel in the U.S.
At the center of the story is John Griggs, a charismatic young man living in Orange County, with a petty criminal record and a love for getting high. Somewhere along the line, he discovered LSD, which altered the course of his life. He considered his hallucinogenic trip a religious experience, and the drug became his religious sacrament.
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In these twilight days of the mass-market paperback, I was delighted to see a honest-to-goodness flying-saucer paperback with appropriate hyperbole on its cover:
“Shocking accounts of UFOs observed during times of conflict.”
“Includes Incredible Photographs of UFO Sightings!”
If you have any interest in Fortean topics, that has got to warm the cockles of your heart. Having grown up in the 1970s with an eye toward the oddball and the obscure, this was what most of these books did.
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Jeff Danby’s DAY OF THE PANZER: A STORY OF AMERICAN HEROISM AND SACRIFICE IN SOUTHERN FRANCE should be an absolute treat for detail-oriented fans of World War II battles, wargamers and history buffs. He tracks in meticulous, but never boring detail the actions of L Company, 15th Regiment, U.S. 3rd Infantry Division as it invades Southern France.
That’s right: Southern France. This isn’t about Normandy; it’s the rare book about a different theater of action that isn’t always discussed.
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Compiled by “The Listomaniacs,” LISTOMANIA: A WORLD OF FASCINATING FACTS IN GRAPHIC DETAIL is like a collection of the infographics — “charticles,” call them at the pub I work for — from back issues of USA TODAY, but less timely and expanded to single pages or an entire spread. From “8 Unusual Ransoms” to “46 Movies with Ridiculous High Body Counts” to “57 Interesting Potato Chip Flavors,” the book covers 190 topics you didn’t know you wanted to know more about.
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