In The Old Ball Game, Frank Deford, NPR sports commentator and Sports Illustrated journalist retells the story of an unusual friendship between two towering figures in baseball history.At the turn of the twentieth century, Christy Mathewson was one of baseball's first superstars. Over six feet tall, clean cut, and college educated, he didn't pitch on the Sabbath and rarely spoke an ill word about anyone. He also had one of the most devastating arms in all of baseball. New York Giants manager John McGraw, by contrast, was ferocious. The pugnacious tough guy was already a star infielder who, with the Baltimore Orioles, helped develop a new, scrappy style of baseball, with plays like the hit-and-run, the Baltimore chop, and the squeeze play. When McGraw joined the Giants in 1902, the Giants were coming off their worst season ever. Yet within three years, Mathewson clinched New York City's first World Series for McGraw's team by throwing three straight shutouts... Views: 49
The definitive history of the Carter Administration from the man who participated in its surprising number of accomplishments—drawing on his extensive and never-before-seen notes.Stuart Eizenstat was at Jimmy Carter's side from his political rise in Georgia through four years in the White House, where he served as Chief Domestic Policy Adviser. He was directly involved in all domestic and economic decisions as well as in many foreign policy ones. Famous for the legal pads he took to every meeting, he draws on more than 7500 pages of notes and 350 interviews of all the major figures of the time, to write the comprehensive history of an underappreciated president—and to give an intimate view on how the presidency works. Eizenstat reveals the grueling negotiations behind Carter's peace between Israel and Egypt, what led to the return of the Panama Canal, and how Carter made human rights a presidential imperative. He follows Carter's passing of... Views: 49
Former cop Lily Yu has her sister's wedding to attend, a missing magical staff to find, and now must deal with her grandmother's decision to return to the old country. Lily could turn to the man she's involved with for advice, but for all the passion that flares between them, she doesn't really know Rule Turner--she's just bound to him for life. Rule happens to be a werewolf, and Lily wonders just how far she can trust him. Views: 49
Lily and her family are going for a walk with their dog, Hugo, when Hugo sniffs out an amazing secret. A litter of kittens have been abandoned in the woods! Without their mother the kittens may not survive the night, so Lily's family take them in. Lily loves caring for the kittens – and even Hugo does his best to protect the new arrivals. But her little sister is afraid of cats and Lily knows all along that she won't be able to keep any of the kittens – even her favourite, the adorable Stanley. All too soon the time comes for them to go to new homes. How can Lily persuade her family that Stanley's perfect home is with her? Views: 49
Corbin Nelson had stayed in New York with his non-spanko wife when all of his friends built and moved to Colorado. With his reason for staying in the city gone, and his trust ripped to shreds, he moved to Corbin's Bend to make a new start. His one rule: he would never give his heart away again. It only took a couple weeks for him to question that tenet when he rescued the same damsel in distress twice.Zinnia Loraine bought into Corbin's Bend to hide: from the paparazzi, a scandal, and most of all from a deranged fan. She thought she could hide in her home and stay safe and secure. When her car broke down and she was rescued by Corbin, all thoughts of hiding fled as she was instantly attracted to the tall, middle-aged man. That he was an alpha male who spanked and loved curvy women just made it even better.Unable to keep their hands off one another after their first date, they both were in this for fun... until her stalker found her and they both realized how much they cared for... Views: 49
A KEY EYEWITNESS HAD DISAPPEARED WITHOUT A TRACE... Special Agent Will Bishop had a mission to track down the one woman who could put a brutal killer in jail. After four years of hard work, he finally had a lead that took him to a Colorado retreat. The founder of Healing Hearts was his target and nothing would stand in his way. Until he met counselor Abigale Sullivan, and their instant attraction rose to fever pitch. Will soon realized that the witness he sought lived right under his nose...and he had to convince her to come out of hiding. Would their newfound love stand in the way of the most dangerous journey of their lives? Views: 49
SHE WAS LUCKY TO BE ALIVE... She was lucky to be alive...after nearly being trampled to death by a stampeding cattle herd. Now Kate Sampson had to be on her guard every second. Professional bodyguard Zack West offered protection...and something a lot more dangerous. The sensual cowboy had branded her with his passion. And now he was back, ready to break her heart all over again. BUT HAD HIS LUCK RUN OUT? The wild tomboy had grown into an alluring woman who needed him whether she liked it or not. Whoever had murdered her father was coming after Kate, and Zack wasn't about to lose her a second time. Not with everything he cherished suddenly at stake.... Views: 49
For Kate Klein, a semi-accidental mother of three, suburbia's been full of unpleasant surprises. Her once-loving husband is hardly ever home. The supermommies on the playground routinely snub her. Her days are spent carpooling and enduring endless games of Candy Land, and at night, most of her orgasms are of the do-it-yourself variety.When a fellow mother is murdered, Kate finds that the unsolved mystery is one of the most interesting things to happen in Upchurch since her neighbors broke ground for a guesthouse and cracked their septic tank. Even though Kate's husband and the police chief warn her that crime-fighting's a job best left to professionals, she can't let it go.So Kate launches an unofficial investigation -- from 8:45 to 11:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when her kids are in nursery school -- with the help of her hilarious best friend, carpet heiress Janie Segal, and Evan McKenna, a former flame she thought she'd left behind in New York City.As the search for the killer progresses, Kate is drawn deeper into the murdered woman's double life. She discovers the secrets and lies behind Upchurch's placid picket-fence facade -- and the choices and compromises all modern women make as they navigate between independence and obligation, small towns and big cities, being a mother and having a life of one's own.Engrossing, suspenseful, and laugh-out-loud funny, Goodnight Nobody is another unputdownable, timely tale; an insightful mystery with a great heart and a narrator you'll never forget. Views: 49
From Publishers Weekly Maqiao, a fictitious rural village lost in the vitals of Mao's Communist empire, is to Han's magical novel what Macondo is to One Hundred Years of Solitude-a place in which the various brutalities and advances of contemporary history are transformed within the "fossil seams" of popular myth. Han adopts the rules of the dictionary to the rules of fiction, distributing mini-sagas of rural bandits, Daoist madmen and mixed up Maoists across the definitions of terms with special meaning in Maqiao. Han, narrator as well as author, is sent to Maqiao as part of a cadre of "Educated Youth" during the Cultural Revolution. A sharp, sophisticated observer, he narrates these folkloric tales from the vantage point of contemporary China, situating them within a richly informative historical and philosophical framework. Among the stories that deserve mention are those of Wanyu, the village's best singer and reputed Don Juan, who is discovered to lack the male "dragon"; of "poisonous" Yanzao, so called both because his aged mother has a reputation as a poisoner and because he is assigned to spread pesticides (and in so doing absorbs such a quantity of toxins that mosquitoes die upon contact with him); and of Tiexiang, the adulterous wife of Party Secretary Benyi, who takes up with Three Ears, so called because of the rudimentary third ear that grows under one of his armpits. Flawlessly translated by Lovell, this novel should not be missed by lovers of literature. Review "The best novel of the year isn't that DeLillo-on-automatic-pilot thing that broke out, along with SARS, this spring; nor the smutty anti-Islamic screed by the super-annuated French juvenile delinquent; nor even Jane Smiley's excellent investigation of the unlikely souls of real estate agents. Rather, it is this 'dictionary' of the dialect of a fictitious village, Maqiao, lost in the squat hills of South China." – San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "[A] subtle and smashingly effective critique of the futility of totalitarian efforts to suppress language and thought – and, more to the point, a stunningly imaginative and absorbing work of fiction." – Kirkus Reviews "[A Dictionary of Maqiao] is a magnificent book, epic in its ambitions and sweep without any of the sentimental obfuscation on which that genre so often depends." – The Village Voice "[B]oth fascinating and masterful… Han paints a detailed, intriguing and amusing picture of what happens when Marxism collides with entrenched village beliefs, and how traditional China coexists with modernity. The book is filled with peculiar, beguiling, tragic characters and scenery so real you can touch it… This is an intelligent, amusing, clever, fascinating and well-written view of a China most of us never see, or don't recognize when we do." – Asian Review of Books "To enter [A Dictionary of Maqiao]'s pages is to cross into a world of bandits and ghosts, where 'rude' means 'pretty,' and homosexuals are 'Red Flower Daddies' and people don't die, they 'scatter.'" – The New York Times Book Review " Dictionary of Maqiao is a wonderful, many-layered novel written as a series of definitions which gains further depth from a good translation… Han Shaogong's novel [is] clever, sympathetic and amused… Julia Lovell's translation is an impressive achievement, a fine reflection of a complex book." – Times Literary Supplement "Han Shaogong's novel has won wide acclaim, and deservedly so; through his treatment of language, he not only vividly portrays village life in rural China, but also inspires readers to rethink what they are accustomed to taking for granted." – Persimmon "Sometimes humorous, but crude and grim at other times, the entries all intertwine to give readers a picture of life in this distant region." – Library Journal "The narrator's folkloric stereotypes the provincial simpletons and fools, the cuckolded husbands, the long-suffering wives resolve affectingly into distinct human beings. And the peasant vocabulary vulgar, quaint, superstitious which so perplexesthe earnest young outsider is also revealed to be cunningly subversive, an antidote to the totalitarian imposition of a "reality"irreconcilably at odds with the real thing." – Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe "This is a serious, ground-breaking and finally brilliant novel by one of China's leading authors… The translation is everywhere excellent – fluent, colloquial where appropriate, without being excessively so, learned in places, and without any hint anywhere of 'translationese'… surely destined for classic status." – Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times "In its formal inventiveness, its nuanced depiction of Chinese peasant life, and its speculative explorations into the Chinese cultural psyche, this is one of the finest novels of the post-Mao era to so far make its way into English." – Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas, Review of Contemporary Fiction "Worth reading…fascinating and surprisingly accessible." – Anton Graham, China Economic Review "Han is a good storyteller, ingeniously leading the reader into the heart of his stories… A Dictionary of Maqiao is readable and enjoyable." – Fatima Wu, World Literature Today *** In a country where much can hinge on the written word, Chinese author Han Shaogong gives it the respect it deserves. In a beautiful afterword to his A Dictionary of Maqiao, he writes: “Words have lives of their own. They proliferate densely, endlessly transform, gather and scatter for short bursts, drift along without mooring, shift and intermingle, sicken and live on, have personalities and emotions, flourish, decline, even die out.” Contrary to what the title suggests, A Dictionary of Maqiao is actually a novel, written in an interesting technique, almost through the point of view a spectator. Han spends much of the years of the Cultural Revolution in China, in a small village in the south called Maqiao. He spreads the words of the authority while staying useful and productive in the village. Han knows as well as anybody that the language of a region is an effective mirror of its culture. Through “dictionary entries,” explanations of region-specific terms, a picture of Maqiao (arguably even China) appears. The entries are fascinating some just a paragraph in length, others going for at least a few pages. A single entry can count for larger criticisms or appreciation of culture. For example, an examination of the word, “sweet,” indicates that the word can actually cover a wide spectrum of flavors in Maqiao. Han also makes a beautifully executed leap to generalizations peoples of the world make about each other: “Even today, the majority of Chinese people still have great difficulty in distinguishing the facial types of western, northern, and eastern Europeans, and in making out cultural differences between the British, the French, the Spanish, the Norwegians, the Poles etc. The names of each European people are no more than empty symbols in school textbooks, and many Chinese, when put on the spot, are still unable to make any link between them and corresponding characteristics in facial type, clothing, language and customs. This baffles Europeans, just as it baffles the Chinese that Europeans cannot differentiate clearly between people from Shanghai, Canton, and the Northeast.” Another interesting “entry” is one on science where the residents consider science to be the product of “lazybones” and therefore deride its use. As with any culture, modern values soon make their appearance even in Maqiao. Towards the end, Han explains: “In Maqiao during the 1990s, a lot of new words came into fashion and passed into common usage: 'television,' 'paint,' 'diet,' 'operate,' Ni-Ping (a well-known television host), 'disco dancing,' 'Highway 107,' 'seafood,' 'lottery tickets,' 'build the Great Wall (play Mahjong),' 'bump-the-butt' (motorbike), 'hold the basket' (act as mediator) and so on.” While these dictionary entries make for a fascinating glimpse into China, the book is not easy reading. For one, the very small print creates practical difficulties. This combined with the heft of the material can weigh the reader down significantly. Still, the end result is well worth the reader’s effort. A Dictionary of Maqiao (translated ably by Julia Lovell) emerges as a wonderful, if fractured, portrait of China. Han Shaogong, through his award-winning novel, provides not only a nuanced look into modern China, but also focuses on language as an instrument of keeping culture alive. “Strictly speaking, what we might term a 'common language' will forever remain a distant human objective,” he says, “providing we don’t intend exchange to become a process of mutual neutralization, of mutual attrition, then we must maintain vigilance and resistance toward exchange, preserving in this compromise our own, indomitable forms of expression.” A Dictionary of Maqiao establishes wonderfully, the vital link between language and culture. In a world of rapid globalization, the subtle warning about the increasing loss of languages is only too timely and important. Reviewed by Poornima Apte Views: 49
