Christy Mathewson was every boys hero when he played major league baseball of the New York Giants during his career from 1900 to 1916. 

Mathewson is one of baseball's all-time great players, and that may not say enough.
Mathewson's career numbers are these: 373 wins/188 losses, 2.13 earned run average, 2507 strikeouts, 435 complete games, 79 shutouts and a 1.058 walks/hits per 9 innings.

Mathewson was elected to the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame class in 1936. That 1936 Baseball Hall of Fame class only included Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson - and Mathewson.

Mathewson wrote Pitching In A Pinch in 1912 in the midst of his stellar career, and the year after he was second in the National League in Most Valuable Player voting. 

All of this is important to emphasize just what kind of player Mathewson was, but all of these statistics and accolades need to be coupled with Mathewson's personality and character. In an age of hard-drinking, hard-living baseball players, Mathewson was the model of clean living, wrote a series of children's book and carried himself humbly even though he was the marquee player on the great Giants teams managed by John McGraw. 

Pitching In A Pinch is written by Mathewson is direct, casual first-person just as though the pitcher himself was talking to you as you shared an ice tea with him on the front porch of his home. In 1912, a book like this would have been a boys dream. The biggest sports hero of the day was talking just to you in this book.

Mathewson covers how to pitch in the big leagues, how to get along with coaches (most importantly, the notorious McGraw), how to get prepared in the spring, how to find your own "groove" as well as the "grooves" of other players, how to learn from each time you face a batter, how a team plays defense in the field, how to pitch when you don't have your best stuff, baseball players superstitions and habits, and most importantly hoe to pitch in the critical moments that will "break" a game - or, how to pitch in the pinch.

The book offers wonderful insight into baseball played at a high level. It also offers a great look to baseball in the first decade of the 1900's. 

If you are a baseball fan, you will love this book.
If you are a history fan, you will love this book.
If you are a fan of Christy Mathewson, you will love this book.

This would be a great book to own, but you can find it for free in ebook format, at Project Guttenberg right here.

Christy Mathewson's biography is here.
Christy Mathewson's statistics are here.
John McGraw biography is here.

Agincourt is a stunning battle in the Earth's history of battles.
I cannot even explain it properly.

Each time I come across the battle, read something about the battle, happen upon a television show about the battle, I am stunned and shake my head.
Agincourt is undefinable except for what it is.
Agincourt.

Bernard Cornwell is a fantastic writer.
He wraps this battle into a campaign of Henry V into France in his quest to then capture the French throne.

Nick Hook is an outlaw English archer in the service of Henry.
Hook finds begins to find himself in the middle of the slogging English campaign through France.
Hook finds himself in the midst of long, drawn out marches, arduous sieges, deplorable troop conditions, vicious battles, bloody and muddy, yelling skirmishes.

Yet the real star of the book is Cornwell who weaves it all together in vivid place and time as the English army moves forward into France and keeps you, the reader, on horseback next to young Hook.

This is a book to read - and not put down.
The book will make you hold your breath, gasp at the brutality of the skirmishes and shake your head that men really, actually and truly lived and died through all of that.

The book will make you always remember the English longbow.
And never forget Agincourt.

I've read Malcolm Gladwell's books, Blink and Outliers.

Those books were completely engaging, interesting and compelling to the point that I could not put them down.

Those books are not Grisham yarns or Clancy tales of page-turning fiction, but are books of journalistic exploration, discovery, understanding and what-is-learned-next non-fiction.

I have never read non-fiction books that are as enthralling as Gladwell's work.

Gladwell has mastered his prose style. 
Gladwell has also mastered his storytelling craft.
He is a complete artist in every sense.
He weaves these true life accounts and histories wonderfully and tacitly, moving you through the lives of these people and moving you through these unremarkable now remarkable events.

What The Dog Saw is a collection of Mr. Gladwell's work from his efforts for The New Yorker.
Each chapter is an essay discovered and written for the magazine. This book provides numerous subjects as opposed to one main, overriding subject pursued in his other books.

These essays and articles are written extremely well and are very interesting. As always, the people, places, facts, misconceptions, truths and far-reaching results of all of these ingredients are quite incredible. "Ronco", women's hair coloring and the Pill all provide deep subject matter for Mr. Gladwell to delve into.

But - for me, this book did not keep my interest.

After thinking it over, I think I would enjoy reading Mr. Gladwell researching, discovering and crafting these subjects into one of his full-length works. He is so good at all of the above ingredients, it's a let down to only get small pieces explored and end up with small pieces written. I just wanted Mr. Gladwell to go all out on these subjects - writing for a magazine format does not allow that.

That may be where the rub is for me.

This is not a Malcolm Gladwell book.
This is a great collection of Mr. Gladwell's New Yorker articles.

Malcom Gladwell's homepage.

I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan.
To me, there is no one that makes music that is as consistently great (not just good, but great) as he does, or has.
That's only my opinion, of course.

Chronicles: Volume One is an amazing book.
It's part autobiography, part introspective, part chronological, part documentary, part historical, part commentary, part road trip, part front-porch discussion, part revealing, part discovery and all completely interesting and enjoyable.

The fantastic autobiographical portions of the read are vivid and colorful.
So much so, it's as if you as the reader are there with him at the same time in the same place.
Mr. Dylan recounts some of his early inspirations and how he was led or followed or happened upon further inspirations and genesis' for his own music.

The journey Mr. Dylan is on throughout the book is engaging and cliff-hanging at every turn.
We all may think we know how it turns out for him, and even though he knows how it ends up for him, there is no surety in any of that as he retells it all.

In the middle of the crackling journey is a tremendous recount of how his "Oh, Mercy" album was recorded. This section made it completely clear that only certain ones of us are able to create music of any sort and only a very small selection of that group of people are able to make music that is long-standing, enduring and relevant - or as describe it plainly as, "good".
The effort, work, time, stress, strain and vulnerability needed to complete theses songs and this album is astounding.

It certainly is an eye-opener to learn how much work it takes, and how many people it takes to get good songs created and an album formed.

If you are a Bob Dylan fan, you will really love this book.

If you are not a Bob Dylan fan, you will really like this book.

The history told here is full and colorful.
The details given are engaging and page-turning.
 
To me, just like Mr. Dylan's music is packed full of wonderful layered details and ringing extraordinary lyrics, this book offers a similar experience.

In this book, Mr. Dylan reveals some of himself and ends up being not what you think he would be - just like his music that is not just what you think it is once you take the time to listen to it.

Bob Dylan's homepage.

I didn't know much about World War One.

I grew up learning about World War Two.
I watched movies, television shows, played with plastic army men and knew my grandparents had served in that War.

It is a flat shame and downright failure of my own and my schooling history that I do not more about World War One than I do.

Jeff Shaara authors a story that is riveting, vivid and tactile.
To The Last Man is an excellent book.

The ease with which he moves from theatre to theatre and personality to personality is remarkable. This novel will take you into the air above France and Germany in canvas and wire bi-planes into the life of both a Lafayette Escadrille pilot and Germany's most decorated Ace.

This novel will put you into the desolate muddy quagmire that was no man's land lined with trenches of troops.It will put you in the soaked, crusted boots and chigger-ridden uniform of a United States infantryman.

This novel will put you into the offices of commanders both in the United States and Europe.
It will put you in the life of American General John J. Pershing as he leads the United States Army against the enemy and between two distinctly different allied forces.

You will experience both sides of the war - sometimes three or four different sides.

You will marvel at how any pilot survived any mission, much less an entire war.
You will hang on to hope that any foot soldier could survive any offensive much less the war.
You will be amazed at what a true leader can accomplish in the face of a dread adversary with little faithful help and barely, if any, true army at the beginning of it all.

It is amazing to me - and shameful to me that I did not understand this previously - that this war, was waged with ancient methods of combat, at grave sacrifice, with the lives of an entire generation.

It is stunning to me that this War ushered in not only a new world, but a brand new balance on the planet and indeed, this war to end all wars, set the stage in fact for World War Two.

Freedom is not free.
We should not forget these men...

Jeff Shaara's homepage.

What happens at Steeple Bumpleigh stays at Steeple Bumpleigh....

At least that's what our hero Bertie Wooster hopes.
His man Jeeves is there as always to help him.

P.G. Wodehouse is on his game once again in this delightful story with wonderful characters you always remember and never want to forget.

Warm and cheerful, silly and chuckle-filled, this story - as are all of Wodehouse's works - is a winner.

Help is what Bertie needs, caught between an engagement possibility to the fair Craye and her distraught boyfriend, Stilton Cheesewright while thundering Aunt Agatha prowls in the background.

Aunt Agatha's husband is usually an aide to Bertie but not this time - simply because this is all coming to fore at dear Steeple Bumpleigh. Steeple Bumpleigh is very dear to Aunt Agatha's husband, the the honorable Lord Worpelson.

Lord Worpelson is indeed Lord of Steeple Bumpleigh...

What, ho!

P.G. Wodehouse resource website.

To tell you what this book is about would result in you not having to read it.
You would also completely miss out on Mr. Gladwell's fascinating approach to following the trails of research and approacable, sharply insightful writing.

I can try and explain this book in a series of exclamations as examples of what you will experience while reading:

No kidding?
Duh.
Oh, my.
I never noticed that.
You're kidding?
No, I don't.
No, we don't.
Yes, that does.
I never thought about that.
Dang.
Gasp.
Now I feel silly.
Well, how about that...

If you have read any of Mr. Gladwell's books, you will enjoy this book as well.
If this is your first go at a Malcolm Gladwell book, I will bet you will enjoy it and then promptly seek out his other works.

Don't Blink.
Well, I think you most certainly should Blink.

Sword Song: The Battle For London is the fourth book in Mr. Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles series.

I read this book first, not knowing any better and because it was the only Cornwell book at the library that wasn't a Sharpe's book. After reading this book, I hurriedly reserved the first book of this series at the same library.

In a nutshell, The Battle for London follows the main character, Uthred as he walks the line between loyalties to King Alfred and the invading and very powerful Danes.

Uthred is Alfred's main war general/leader and he is quickly charged to invade and wrest London from possession by the Danes who have come down from the north along the Thames and taken the city.

Uthred is a wonderful character - he is someone you have to meet to understand.
I sure like Uthred a lot, but would certainly fear him he were against me and I would do all I could to have him and his men with me - which is just what this tremendous book is about, Uthred and the warring parties that both want the same thing for very different reasons.
And the is Uthred in the middle of it.

The book is packed with wonderful details of life in this period of time, huge hand-to-hand battles, naval skirmishes, invasions and sieges of cities and some great and very vivid characters.

This is a ripping read and if you are a fan of historical fiction, history, war stories and/or memorable characters, this is for you.

Make no mistake, Uthred is the reason to read it.
...make sure he knows that, if you can.

Bernard Cornwell's homepage.