{"title":"Kevin Baker","description":"KEVIN BAKER is a novelist, historian, and journalist. He has been a professional writer since the age of 13, working originally for the Gloucester Daily Times as a stringer covering school-boy sports. He is the coauthor of Reggie Jackson's Becoming Mr. October. His work as appeared in Harper's, where he is also a contributing editor,  New York Observer, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He lives in New York City.","products":[{"product_id":"strivers-row-paperback","title":"Strivers Row - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Rev. Jonah Dove is the son of a legendary Harlem minister, and a man troubled in both mind and spirit. He feels himself unworthy and incapable of taking up the burden of running his church from the larger-than-life figure who is his father. He is haunted both by his own, shameful history of \"passing\" as a white man in college, and by the prospects for his people in the harsh, new, racist age he fears the world is entering. Malcolm Little -- better known as Malcom X -- is a teenage hustler from Lansing, Michigan by way of Boston, a young man on the make, trying always to be something bigger, tougher, savvier, and more confident than he really is. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e On his way to New York, Malcolm happens to come to the rescue of Jonah and his wife, Amanda, when they are attacked by some drunken soldiers on the train. From then on, their paths cross repeatedly as they each go about trying to find what they really want out of the roiling, wartime city, until the moment when Harlem finally erupts around them, as a people driven beyond endurance strikes out blindly at all the forces keeping it entrapped in misery and hopelessness. Stranded on the streets of a rioting city, Jonah and Malcolm meet each other once more, as they come to grips with what they are and what the future will hold for them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Rev. Jonah Dove is the son of a legendary Harlem minister, and a man troubled in both mind and spirit. He feels himself unworthy and incapable of taking up the burden of running his church from the larger-than-life figure who is his father. He is haunted both by his own, shameful history of \"passing\" as a white man in college, and by the prospects for his people in the harsh, new, racist age he fears the world is entering. Malcolm Little -- better known as Malcom X -- is a teenage hustler from Lansing, Michigan by way of Boston, a young man on the make, trying always to be something bigger, tougher, savvier, and more confident than he really is. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e On his way to New York, Malcolm happens to come to the rescue of Jonah and his wife, Amanda, when they are attacked by some drunken soldiers on the train. From then on, their paths cross repeatedly as they each go about trying to find what they really want out of the roiling, wartime city, until the moment when Harlem finally erupts around them, as a people driven beyond endurance strikes out blindly at all the forces keeping it entrapped in misery and hopelessness. Stranded on the streets of a rioting city, Jonah and Malcolm meet each other once more, as they come to grips with what they are and what the future will hold for them.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369128657119,"sku":"9780060955199","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/OM4QjGRSQO9780060955199.webp?v=1789139212"},{"product_id":"sometimes-you-see-it-coming-paperback","title":"Sometimes You See It Coming - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBased in part on the life of baseball legend Ty Cobb, this book belongs in the pantheon of great baseball novels.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Barr is the kind of player who isn't supposed to exist anymore. An all-around superstar, he plays the game with a single-minded ferocity that makes his New York Mets team all but invincible. Yet Barr himself is a mystery with no past, no friends, no women, and no interests outside hitting a baseball as hard and as far as he can. Not even Ellie Jay, the jaded sportswriter who can out-think, out-drink, and out-write any man in the press box. She wants to think she admires Barr's skill on a ballfield, but suspects she might be in love with a man who isn't really there. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBarr leads the Mets to one championship after another. Then chaos arrives in the person of new manager Charli Stanzi, well-known psychopath. Under Stanzi's tutelage, the team simply falls apart. Then Barr himself inexplicably starts to unravel. For the first time in his life, his formidable skills fail him, and only Ellie Jay and another can help - if he will let them. Hanging in the balance are his sanity, the World Series, and true love. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBased in part on the life of baseball legend Ty Cobb, this book belongs in the pantheon of great baseball novels.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Barr is the kind of player who isn't supposed to exist anymore. An all-around superstar, he plays the game with a single-minded ferocity that makes his New York Mets team all but invincible. Yet Barr himself is a mystery with no past, no friends, no women, and no interests outside hitting a baseball as hard and as far as he can. Not even Ellie Jay, the jaded sportswriter who can out-think, out-drink, and out-write any man in the press box. She wants to think she admires Barr's skill on a ballfield, but suspects she might be in love with a man who isn't really there. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBarr leads the Mets to one championship after another. Then chaos arrives in the person of new manager Charli Stanzi, well-known psychopath. Under Stanzi's tutelage, the team simply falls apart. Then Barr himself inexplicably starts to unravel. For the first time in his life, his formidable skills fail him, and only Ellie Jay and another can help - if he will let them. Hanging in the balance are his sanity, the World Series, and true love. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369163948255,"sku":"9780060535971","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/kXC9FkRjJY9780060535971.webp?v=1789139268"},{"product_id":"paradise-alley-paperback","title":"Paradise Alley - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey came by boat from a starving land--and by the Underground Railroad from Southern chains--seeking refuge in a crowded, filthy corner of hell at the bottom of a great metropolis. But in the terrible July of 1863, the poor and desperate of Paradise Alley would face a new catastrophe--as flames from the war that was tearing America in two reached out to set their city on fire.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey came by boat from a starving land--and by the Underground Railroad from Southern chains--seeking refuge in a crowded, filthy corner of hell at the bottom of a great metropolis. But in the terrible July of 1863, the poor and desperate of Paradise Alley would face a new catastrophe--as flames from the war that was tearing America in two reached out to set their city on fire.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369168371935,"sku":"9780060875954","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/eYnT45lTZn9780060875954.webp?v=1789139274"},{"product_id":"the-new-york-game-baseball-and-the-rise-of-a-new-city-hardcover","title":"The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA\u003ci\u003e NEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eNOTABLE BOOK\u003ci\u003e - Sports Illustrated #\u003c\/i\u003e1 Book of 2024 - A hugely entertaining history of baseball and New York City, bursting with larger-than-life figures and fascinating stories from the game's beginnings to the end of World War II. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"You're going to beg for extra innings. Without missing a scandal or a sensation, with an eye on how assimilation transforms the picture, Kevin Baker has written a buoyant, double coming-of-age story. \"--Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBaseball is \"the New York game\" because New York is where the diamond was first laid out, where the bunt and the curveball were invented, and where the home run was hit. It's where the game's first stars were born, and where everyone came to play or watch the game. With nuance and depth, historian Kevin Baker brings this all vividly back to life: the still-controversial, indelible moments--Did the Babe call his shot? Was Merkle out? Did they fix the 1919 World Series? Here are all the legendary players, managers, and owners, in all their vivid, complicated humanity, on and off the field. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn Baker's hands the city and the game emerge from the murk of nineteenth-century American life--driven by visionaries and fixers, heroes and gangsters. He details how New York and its favorite sport came to mirror one another, expanding, bumbling through catastrophe and corruption, and rising out of these trials stronger than ever. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom the first innings played in vacant lots and tavern yards in the 1820s; to the canny innovations that created the very first sports league; to the superb Hispanic and Black players who invented their own version of the game when white baseball sought to exclude them. And all amidst New York's own, incredible evolution from a raw, riotous town to a new world city. The New York Game is a riveting, rollicking, brilliant ode to America's beloved pastime and to its indomitable city of origin.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51382216523999,"sku":"9780375421839","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/DYQbzneOuH9780375421839.webp?v=1789286559"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/kevin-baker.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}