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KINGS OF THE HILL

Name: KINGS OF THE HILL
Author: Nolan Ryan
ISBN: 0-06-018330-6

AN IRREVERANT LOOK AT THE MEN ON THE MOUND

by Nolan Ryan with Mickey Herskowitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 1992

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Fast-ball maestro Ryan, who tossed a gopher ball with his autobiography, Throwing Heat (1988), rockets one down the center of the plate in this zippy review of baseball pitchers and their foibles. Ryan entered the major leagues as a New York Met, and he dotes on memories of that team's early years as ``the strangest collection of athletes you can imagine.'' Although some pitchers he discusses (e.g., Warren Spahn) had careers that stretch back to baseball's Pleistocene Age, Ryan, writing with Herskowitz (coauthor, Cosell, etc.), sticks mostly to hurlers of his own era— a massive chunk of baseball history in itself: Ryan, 45, is about to begin his 25th year as a major-leaguer. He likes to rank and categorize his peers: Best southpaw? Sandy Koufax (``like watching a line of poetry come to life''). Pitcher with the nastiest curveball? Koufax again. Luckiest pitcher? Lew Burdette, who in 1957 won 21 games despite an astronomical E.R.A. Best reliever? Rollie Fingers. Strangely, despite his famed equilibrium, Ryan seems fond of pitchers whom he calls ``obsessed'': Jim Palmer, who attempted a comeback after being elected to the Hall of Fame; recluse Steve Carlton (``the Howard Hughes of baseball''); shipwrecks like 31-game winner and convicted felon Denny McLain. But Ryan dislikes bullies, and he argues fiercely and intelligently for good manners on and off the field. He backs this up by speaking well of just about everyone, picking a quip, quote, or quirk that quick-sketches the pitcher to perfection (Koufax became great only when his hair grayed and he realized that it was ``a signal to get busy''; as a child, McLain worked as a numbers-runner). Sometimes the author startles with the literary equivalent of a Ryan fastball: ``Poor timing: Don Larsen's wife filed for divorce on the day he pitched his perfect game in the World Series.'' A power performance from the greatest power pitcher ever. (Thirty-five b&w photos.)

Pub Date: May 6, 1992

ISBN: 0-06-018330-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)