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Howard Burman
THE BOOKS
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Who is Howard Burman, this individual who can write in such a moving fashion? He’s the real deal. The holder of a Ph.D. in Dramatic Literature from Ohio State and a Fulbright Scholar, Burman has served as the artistic producing director of three theater companies and has written more than 20 full-length plays, so you know he has a better feel for dialog than just about anyone else who’s written baseball history. And that’s the other aspect of “A Man Called Shoeless” that shines from the pages… the dialog Burman has created to tell his story.
This extensive (600 pages) and moving story of a man called Shoeless makes it clear that Joe Jackson was not your average ballplayer, any more than Howard Burman is your average baseball author. Make no mistake, despite its obvious historical underpinnings and Burman's extensive research, this is not a history book. Burman has put his own words in the mouths of many of the book's characters to, in effect, fill in holes in the historical record. More a biography than anything else, it is a fine piece of creative writing, a book worth reading, for its insight into southern mill towns, the southern mentality, baseball in the Deadball Era, the 1919 World Series, and the undeniably hard life and times of Shoeless Joe Jackson.
--John Shiffert, "19 to 21"
A Man Called Shoeless
Avenir Light is a clean and stylish font favored by designers. It's easy on the eyes and a great go to font for titles, paragraphs & more.
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ISBN-10: 0692557873
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ISBN-13: 978-0692557877
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The Secret Game
For many years stories circulated about a secret baseball game.
One bleak raw night in February 1911 Al Sangree, the well-known columnist for the New York Journal,and a few others were gathered around a table in the grill of the Keystone Hotel in York, Pennsylvania, talking baseball when Sangree explained the game.
According to Sangree, in early October, 1909, immediately following the World Series between Pittsburgh and Detroit, a toy manufacturer who was a pole vaulter in his college days conceived the idea of bringing together two all-star teams to be selected by his stable groom and himself for a game to be played on a polo field on Staten Island, New York, for a purse of $60,000, to be divided 60 % to the winner and 40% to the loser.
The toy tycoon had but three stipulations: One, he was to supply the purse. Two, there were to be only two spectators--the groom and himself. Three, the managers of the respective teams were to have absolute control of their players in addition to having the right to call any pitches they deemed necessary to an opposing batsman.
The players were to include such stars as Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Eddie Collins.
This is that secret game.
The book contains beautiful full-page color illustrations of all the players.
Ty Cobb
Paradise by Paradise
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I'm a 5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, Perplexing, Psychotic, Inexplicable, Unusual, Intellectual....Paradise By Paradise.... Don't Miss This Story.
Author Howard Burman has penned an extraordinarily perplexing novel. Paradise by Paradise is a tale of a man with a brilliant mind, almost to a fault. He was an academic, but also psychotic; a teacher, a writer, a prodigy. His mind was a cryptic puzzle, and his life an inexplicable mystery. His writings full of lies, and tales, much like his own life.
What happened to Roland Paradise? Was it suicide? Or murder? Is he really gone? This is his tale as told by his friends, colleagues, and Paradise himself. Quotes from major sources and minor innuendos fill the pages of this unusual tale.
It is a great read for those willing to accept the unacceptable, willing to understand the abnormal, those longing for intellectual stimulation. Although the book may not be for everybody, it is definitely a great read.
This is type of book that comes before those great Academy Oscar wins. Well-written, well-told, the author has either done his homework or maybe his mind works in much the same way as Paradise's. Either way, good job, Mr. Burman, we look forward to more great works.
--GetBookReviews.com
Duckrabbit
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After what appears to be a series of linked murders, suspicion is thrown on three film noir-loving brothers. When a strange film appears to shed light on the killings, a young detective becomes obsessed with unraveling the mystery only to be drawn into a world of ambiguity where perception and interpretation are challenged by illusion and reality.
"I can see it all as if in slow motion and I can see myself too as if I were watching myself in a movie. First person meets third person. A black and white movie about me with obligatory noirish low-key lighting, shadowy patterning from venetian blinds and banister rails, and lots of murky shots of people reflected in mirrors, and through rain-spotted glass. Pure chiaroscuro. Plenty of Dutch angle shots. Except whole sections have been snipped out: the loyalties, the connecting part of things, the explanations for things, and everything blowing in the grainy gray cinematic wind. I am another man it seems, a sneering spoilsport, a cynical wise ass. The creature who plays me is coarse and hard-boiled, cocky and reckless, a doofus tooting his own sardonic horn. I’m being played by Elmer Fucking Fudd. Looney Toons does noir."
Season of Ghosts
This is the story of one of the most dramatic baseball seasons ever, as it stretched both backwards and forwards--from the ghosts of seasons and players past to the reality of what followed. At the beginning of 1986, most of the baseball talk was about money; at the end it was about a season that played out with a compelling cast of memorable characters--Bonds, Canseco, Puckett, Ryan, Rose, Boyd, Gooden, Strawberry, Clemens, Boggs, Hernandez, and more.
On an institutional level the game faced critical issues--player contracts, collusion, drugs, free agency, charges of racism, cheating, gambling, the growing popularity of professional football, and the influence of cable TV and satellites. Yet it produced a season of intense drama ending with an unforgettable post-season.
One of the greatest seasons baseball has ever known.
Surrounded
One of the most controversial issues still resounding from WW II relates to Switzerland's role as a non-combatant. As the novel opens, Hitler has had Austria and Poland for breakfast, made a quick snack of Norway, and now wants Switzerland for lunch believing that since it was part of the Holy Roman Empire--First Reich--it should necessarily be part of the Third.
During its darkest hour Switzerland is surrounded by aggressive fascist armies--its politicians quavering and its people beginning to lose hope of retaining their freedom. Switzerland's only general, Henri Guisan, steps into this miasma of growing despair. For him the only way to save the country is to shift most of the Swiss Army to the Alps, leaving the main cities at the mercy of the Panzers. His one hope—learn the details of the attack in advance.
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Enter James St. Lawrence O'Toole, charming prodigal son of an Irish peer who has sold off his considerable art collection to support his profligate ways. O'Toole is persuaded to pose as an "art consultant" to Herman Göring as the Reichsmarschall competes with Hitler to amass the best collection of European masterpieces. The Irishman works through the American O.S.S. spy in Switzerland, Allan Dulles, in an attempt to learn the details of the anticipated German invasion of Switzerland. As he insinuates himself with Göring and begins to gain the Reichsmarschall's trust, he crosses paths with Elfriede Sholtz, a German resistance fighter and sister of the celebrated author Erich Maria Remarque, now exiled in Switzerland; Joseph Schmidt, the popular Jewish tenor, who escapes to Switzerland only to be put in an internment camp; and Lothar Krebs, a young Swiss rifleman called on to help defend his country against a Nazi invasion. O'Toole is exposed when he tries to pass off a fake Vermeer painting to Goring and finds himself imprisoned with the others.
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This not so much a novel of good versus evil or right versus wrong, but of complicated values and complex issues. Neither a defense of Swiss efforts to maintain their vaunted neutrality nor a blatant condemnation of the nation and their self-serving actions, rather it tells the story of individuals struggling for survival as 4M Swiss surrounded by 20M Nazis prepare for the inevitable invasion.
You Shoot Me Now
After a Choctaw Indian is convicted of murder and is sentenced to be executed, he is allowed to go free and play baseball for his team if he will promise to return after his final game to be shot. He agrees. In 1897 in the Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma) a young Choctaw Indian, Walla Tonehka, attends a local dance. When his girlfriend turns up accompanied by another man, Tonehka, in a fit of jealous rage, draws his pistol and in full sight of others, shoots his rival dead with a single shot. He is quickly convicted by a Choctaw court and sentenced.
However, since he is the outstanding player on the Choctaw baseball team which is so important to the Choctaw Nation's sense of accomplishment, the deal is struck. The situation garners great national interest and is reported by newspapers across the country. Questions abound. Will he honor his promise and agree to be executed? Should he? If he does, is he a hero or a fool? At the last minute will he run off? Is the Choctaw sense of honor stronger than that of others? Is the greater sin preferring life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having? Who really has the authority in this case, the U.S. government or the Choctaw Nation?
Based on the incredible true story,
Gentlemen at the Bat
Beginning in 1845, the New York Knickerbockers were the first fully organized base ball club to play the game with written rules similar to those used today. While they did not invent the game, they had an unparalleled role in stabilizing the playing rules and maintaining standards of conduct in a way that fostered an astonishing proliferation of players and clubs.
Based on years of research and told in the style of oral history, this story features all the principal figures from the Knickerbocker club, including Doc Adams, James Whyte Davis, Alexander Cartwright, William Wheaton, and Duncan Curry.
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It's where the game we know came from.
Willie. Mickey & The Duke
Willie, Mickey & The Duke is a coming-of-age story of four friends and a game. The time is 1956; the place, New York City. The game is stickball, a street variation of baseball, and to those who played it, their passion. The friends, because of their exceptional athletic skills, are known in the neighborhood as Willie, Mickey and The Duke after the three great centerfielders. Together, they are the Bayside Knights, a fabled team of the streets. They play for pride, and they play for money.
It is the summer following the boys’ high school graduation. A game is arranged between the two greatest stickball teams in the city with local gamblers supplying the backing. The game becomes a legendary event in the folklore of the city, and in its wake, the boys are never the same. Like the decade itself, they lose whatever remaining innocence they might have possessed.
To Hate Like This is to Love Forever
What if you had a chance to select and manage a team of the greatest Dodger players from throughout history against a team of the greatest Giants? Lukas has that chance and it will change him forever. What matters isn't if something is real.
What matters is if it is true?
Dodgers
Gil Hodges,Jake Daubert, Jackie Robinson, Davey Lopes, Pee Wee Reese, Maury Wills, Ron Cey, Roy Campanella, Al Lopez, Duke Snider, Zach Wheat, Lefty O'Doul, Babe Herman, Pete Reiser, Carl Furillo, Many Mota, Sandy Koufax, Burleigh Grimes, Don Drysdale, Fernando Valenzuela, Nap Rucker, Orel Hershiser, Dazzy Vance, Don Newcombe, Jay Howell.
Giants
Bill Terry, Willie McCovey, Larry Doyle, Frankie Frisch, Jeff Kent, George Davis, John Ward, Matt Williams, Darrell Evans, Roger Bresnahan, Buck Ewing, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Mel Ott, Ross Youngs, Bobby Bonds, Christy Mathewson, Carl Hubbell, Juan Marichal, Tim Keefe, Gaylord Perry, Rube Marquard, Joe McGinnity, Freddie Fitzsimmons, Rod Beck.
A Story Told by Two Liars
The two liars: Roger Kidd, eminent musicologist, respected teacher, devoted father; and Catherine Lapouge, enigmatic idealist, committed activist, brilliant leader. Both are at once the hunters and the hunted in this story of mystery and deceit where little is what it appears and no one is quite who they say. Roger Kidd has the world--respect, a tenured position at a prestigious university, and a gifted young son. When one afternoon his son disappears, everything changes. Suddenly there is no one whom he can trust. As his ordered world begins to collapse, he is drawn into a high-powered cabalistic organization and the hunt for the legendary Lapouge.
His search leads him through a maze of intrigue and deceit into the secretive world of eugenics and utopian ideals. Kidd's story is one of a son gone mysteriously missing and of obsession born of desperation. His relentless pursuit of his son's abductor jeopardizes his life as well as those close to him, and forces him to decide whether the truth is balanced by the pain of finding it.
Lapouge's story is one of a world on the brink of destruction and a fanatical drive to save it regardless of the personal cost or the moral implications of her actions.
You Can't Win
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YOU CAN'T WIN is the true story of one woman's courageous battle with a debilitating addiction and the forces that wanted to keep her dependent on gambling.
Born of a desperate need to please her mother and to escape an abusive father and brother, she becomes addicted first to Bingo and then to slot machines. She slowly slips into a life of lies, self-deception, and despair and finds herself on the verge of losing everything, including her family and ultimately her life.
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When she attempts to pull herself out of the spiral of depression and defeat, she is beaten back through a blatant disregard of the law by the powerful Detroit casinos. She comes to learn that the influence of casino profits on the political system is overwhelming and that the economic interests of the state far outweigh the social costs. In the end, she can't win on the slots, but with the love and support of her husband, she can put a broken life back together
The Secret of the Sad Red Door
When Maria and her sisters moved into a big new house, Maria found a red door hidden behind a chest in her bedroom.
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What she discovered inside was more incredible than anything she could have possibly have imagined.
A book for young readers designed to tillustrate the wonders of science
Zany Games
The Olympic Games of 1900 in Paris were the second in the modern era.
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They were at once exciting, influential, and downright zany.
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This is the story of the American athletes at these games