Seasons of the Southpaw
The basic facts are here, from Spahn’s upbringing in Buffalo to his last year in baseball with the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants, as well as some useful quotes but there are two problems with Freedman's book.
Essays
Essay of the Month: “How to Become a Man of Genius”
“It is a mistake to suppose that a man must be either a cynic or an idealist. Both of them have as a common basis of belief the conviction that mankind as it really is is hateful.”
Melodrama and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage
Collins provides an uplifting narrative about how a same-sex romantic partnership is validated by the government and comes to hold a more respectful and comfortable place among friends, family, and the larger community. Setbacks are setbacks. Wins are wins. Hopes and fears are clear.
Pow! Bam! Biff! Tales of the Comic Book Wars
Slugfest is a fun book for anyone interested in comic books, in American popular culture generally, or in the obsessive and sometimes pathological nature of business competition. But it is not the incisive book about this industry that still awaits its author.
The Riots Goin’ On
The civil disturbances of 1968 signaled a nation that threatened to tear itself asunder but, significantly, Ferguson became a harbinger for a movement against state violence and a conversation about policing because it had become more militarized, not only because it could be brutal or highly insensitive in dealing with African Americans.
The Ballad of Lopez Obrador
This was not the first presidential campaign in which Lόpez Obrador had been in the lead. It was just the first one in which he held it.
Still Stirring
How the real revolution of Columbia 1968 was not across generations but within a generation.
“Like Any Other Citizen Would Want”
Half a century after passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, residential racial segregation and spatial isolation endure. Change has been slow, and it has been uneven.
Crazy Films Define a Time of Upheaval
It was not the box office hits, the Oscar-winners, or even the overtly druggy cinematic curios of 1968 that had the clearest sense of where the Age of Aquarius might be heading. Rather, it was the smaller American and British horror features—most of them overlooked today—that seemed to discern the looming end of the Revolution.
Revisionism as a Substitute for Victory
Revisionists have been making their case that the Vietnam War was winnable ever since Lyndon Johnson abandoned hope of a decisive American victory in the spring of 1968. Far more striking, however, is that even in the early 21sth century the idea that the United States stole defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam thrives as never before.