{"title":"Nicholas Dawidoff","description":"Nicholas Dawidoff is the author of The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg and In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music,  and is the editor of the Library of America's Baseball: A Literary Anthology. He is also a contributor to The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and The New York Times Magazine. A graduate of Harvard University, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy. He and his wife live in New York.","products":[{"product_id":"the-fly-swatter-portrait-of-an-exceptional-character-paperback","title":"The Fly Swatter: Portrait of an Exceptional Character - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cb\u003eThe Fly Swatter\u003c\/b\u003e, Nicholas Dawidoff--bestselling author of \u003cb\u003eThe Catcher Was a Spy\u003c\/b\u003e--vividly reconstructs the life of his grandfather, Alexander Gerschenkron-the Harvard professor who knew the most. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA fascinating character, Gerschenkron feuded with Vladimir Nabokov and John Kenneth Galbraith, flirted with Marlene Dietrich, and played chess with Marcel Duchamp and one-upped both Isiah Berlin and (allegedly) Ted Williams. At Harvard, this celebrated polyglot was known as \"The Great Gerschenkron.\" He was an influential economic theorist who knew twenty languages and so much about so many other things that he was offered chairs in three departments. All this after beginning life with traumatic dramatic escapes from the Bolsheviks (in 1920) and the Nazis (in 1938). Riveting and eloquent, \u003cb\u003eThe Fly Swatter\u003c\/b\u003e's most unusual accomplishment is that it succeeds in telling the extraordinary story of a man's soul.\u003ch3\u003eFront Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn The Fly Swatter, Nicholas Dawidoff--bestselling author of The Catcher Was a Spy--vividly reconstructs the life of his grandfather, Alexander Gerschenkron-the Harvard professor who knew the most. \u003cbr\u003eA fascinating character, Gerschenkron feuded with Vladimir Nabokov and John Kenneth Galbraith, flirted with Marlene Dietrich, and played chess with Marcel Duchamp and one-upped both Isiah Berlin and (allegedly) Ted Williams. At Harvard, this celebrated polyglot was known as \"The Great Gerschenkron.\" He was an influential economic theorist who knew twenty languages and so much about so many other things that he was offered chairs in three departments. All this after beginning life with traumatic dramatic escapes from the Bolsheviks (in 1920) and the Nazis (in 1938). Riveting and eloquent, The Fly Swatter's most unusual accomplishment is that it succeeds in telling the extraordinary story of a man's soul.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51270829342943,"sku":"9780375700064","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/e1YT6C-KSM9780375700064.webp?v=1787784954"},{"product_id":"the-catcher-was-a-spy-the-mysterious-life-of-moe-berg-paperback","title":"The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A delightful book that recounts one of the strangest episodes in the history of espionage. . . . . Relentlessly entertaining.\"--\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMoe Berg is the only major-league baseball player whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA. For Berg was much more than a third-string catcher who played on several major league teams between 1923 and 1939. Educated at Princeton and the Sorbonne, he as reputed to speak a dozen languages (although it was also said he couldn't hit in any of them) and went on to become an OSS spy in Europe during World War II. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs Nicholas Dawidoff follows Berg from his claustrophobic childhood through his glamorous (though equivocal) careers in sports and espionage and into the long, nomadic years during which he lived on the hospitality of such scattered acquaintances as Joe DiMaggio and Albert Einstein, he succeeds not only in establishing where Berg went, but who he was beneath his layers of carefully constructed cover. As engrossing as a novel by John le Carré, \u003ci\u003eThe Catcher Was a Spy \u003c\/i\u003eis a triumphant work of historical and psychological detection.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51272229290207,"sku":"9780679762898","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/cp373pFbhF9780679762898.webp?v=1787809903"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/nicholas-dawidoff.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}