A Life in Sports: Mark Kurlansky on Hank Greenberg and Don Van Natta, Jr. on Babe Didrickson Zaharias
Saturday, Nov. 19, 3:30 p.m., Presentation Pavilion (N.E 3rd Street and 1st Avenue)
Author(s) and Guest(s)
Kostya Kennedy
Seventy years ago, Joe DiMaggio captivated a nation as he achieved the greatest of sports records: a 56-game hitting streak. In 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (Time, Inc. Home Entertainment, $26.95), Sports Illustrated senior editor, Kostya Kennedy, tells the story of how DiMaggio, a mercurial star and a conflicted husband, dealt with the tension and the scrutiny which built with each passing day. Kostya Kennedy's appearance is cancelled.
Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky's thought-provoking book, What?: Are These the 20 Most Important Questions in Human History--Or is This a Game of 20 Questions? (Walker & Co., $15.00), draws on philosophy, religion, literature, policy -- indeed, all of civilization -- to ask what may well be the twenty most important questions in human history. With Kurlansky's striking black-and-white woodcut illustrations throughout, What?, according to Booklist, "sneaks up on us and, in the end, leaves us with a new appreciation for the power of the question mark." Kurlansky is The New York Times bestselling author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and Salt: A World History.
In Kurlansky's young adult novel, Battle Fatigue (Walker Childrens, $17.99), Joel Bloom and his friends, growing up in WWII, dreamed of either fighting in the military or leading the Dodgers to the World Series. When Joel turns eighteen, the Vietnam War is in full swing, and the choices are not nearly as clear. Joel loves his country but knows he cannot fight in an unjust war. He must decide whether to serve in Vietnam or leave for Canada -- a decision that would force him to leave behind those he loves and turn his back on everything he was brought up to believe.
As Kurlansky reveals in Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn't Want to Be One (Yale Press, $25.00), though Greenberg was one of the first players to challenge Babe Ruth's single-season record of sixty home runs, it was the game Greenberg did not play for which he is best remembered. With his decision to sit out a 1934 game because it fell on Yom Kippur, Hank Greenberg became a hero to Jews throughout America. Yet, he was also the quintessential secular Jew, and a man of immense dignity and restraint.
Don Van Natta Jr.
Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias (Little, Brown and Co., $27.99) by Don Van Natta, Jr., is the extraordinary story of a nearly forgotten American superstar athlete, "Babe" Zharias. Despite attempts to keep women from competing, Babe achieved All-American status in basketball and won gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Olympics. Then, as one of the founders of the LPGA, Babe won more consecutive tournaments than any golfer in history. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she took her most daring step of all. Van Natta, Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative correspondent at The New York Times, and the author of First Off the Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers and Cheaters from Taft to Bush and the co-author of Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Schedule
Location
Miami Book Fair International * Miami Dade College
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132
Presentation Pavilion (N.E 3rd Street and 1st Avenue)
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