Read from the first chapter of Under the Big Sky: A Biography of A. B. Guthrie Jr. by Jackson J. Benson:

"Alfred Bertram Guthrie Jr. was a hell of a writer, but he could be an ornery cuss. Bud, as he was called, could be dogmatic, insistent, opinionated, and contrary. At the same time, however, he was a gentleman in the old-fashioned sense of the word—gallant, fair-minded, generous, and kind. Some people hated him for his unabashed political and environmentalist opinions, while others loved him for the man he was. He had a firm social conscience and was determined in his writing to reflect what he saw as the historical truth. But he was not a stern man—he could be funny, a prankster, and a person who loved a good time, drinking, socializing, and telling stories. People liked to be around him.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Under the Big Sky: A Biography of A. B. Guthrie Jr. by Jackson J. Benson”

Read from the first chapter of Louise Pound: Scholar, Athlete, Feminist Pioneer by Robert Cochran:

"And here is a place, less arbitrary than most, to begin the story of Louise Pound. She was by any measure an extraordinary woman. In the academic world she was a pioneering scholar who made important contributions to at least three disciplines. In the world of sports she was an outstanding athlete who would have been at one point the nation’s top-ranked woman tennis player had such listings been compiled at the time. She excelled at every sport she attempted, and she attempted them all. She was a passionate supporter, both as a player and as a coach, of high-level athletic competition for women; Title IX legislation, had she lived to see it, would have seemed to her the restoration on a national scale of a golden age for women’s athletics at the University of Nebraska in which she played a central role. She fought (and lost, in the short term) her life’s bitterest battle in support of women’s athletics at the University of Nebraska. But such gender-based commitments extended far beyond the playing fields—Louise Pound was throughout her long career as a teacher and scholar a dedicated advocate of opportunities for women in general and more especially for their educational and professional advancement. No cause—and she was active in many—gained her greater loyalty.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Louise Pound: Scholar, Athlete, Feminist Pioneer by Robert Cochran”

Read from Chapter 2 of Little Pancho: The Life of Tennis Legend Pancho Segura by Caroline Seebohm:

"Pancho returned home from Quito in the spring of 1938. He had been three months away from home, in the cool high altitude, playing tennis every day. When he appeared at the Guayaquil Tennis Club for the first time after his absence, it was clear he was transformed. Stronger, faster, fitter, he was playing brilliant tennis. He was also extremely competitive. When he played with the members, he played to win.

The club players were impressed. Some of them also realized their little Pancho could be of immense use to them. Coming up was the annual tennis tournament between Guayaquil and Quito. The two major cities in Ecuador historically enjoyed an intense political rivalry, and the tennis tournament was no different. It was a fiercely fought match that represented the most important championship in the country. This year a group of members of the Guayaquil Tennis Club decided they should invite Pancho to participate in the tournament.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Little Pancho: The Life of Tennis Legend Pancho Segura by Caroline Seebohm”

Read a portion of "California Rental" from An Inside Passage by Kurt Caswell:

"Late summer blackberries are gone now. The vines have drawn their juices in. And the sunburned grass is oak-leaf strewn, brittle to my every step. Yellow jackets (people here call them “meat bees”) cluster like crabs between the window and the screen. And in this stillness waiting, it rains the first rain in weeks on the hour of the equinox.

I walk outside my rented house in the southern Cascade Mountains of northern California, inspecting the ground for black bear tracks near the woodpile; I thought I heard footsteps in the night. I find no bear sign in the rained-fresh earth but there, where reflected light redirects my eye, a small red toy car. I pick it up. It is dense and boxy, foreign and artificial. Who was the child who dropped this here? How long ago? Mother calling? Or haphazardly in pursuit of something else? What life passed through this place in a time just beyond my reach?

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: An Inside Passage by Kurt Caswell”

Read from Chapter 4, "1908: The Year of the Song", in Take Me Out to the Ball Game: The Story of the Sensational Baseball Song by Amy Whorf McGuiggan:

"That magical 1908 season seemed to have turned every New Yorker into a Giants—and baseball—fan. The old wooden grandstand was routinely filled with celebrities, politicians, and the stars of Broadway and vaudeville. But the thrills of that 1908 season, its ecstasies and agonies, were all still months away on the April day when Jack Norworth, riding the New York subway, saw a gaudy, lithographed poster of a silk-hosed baseball player standing with a bat on his shoulder.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Take Me Out to the Ball Game by Amy Whorf McGuiggan”

Read an excerpt from the title chapter of Kokomo Joe: The Story of the First Japanese American Jockey in the United States by John Christgau:

"The radio news was that Santa Anita Race Track had opened. Tucked up against the wall of the San Gabriel Mountains, the track seemed an inviting playground, utterly free of irritating stiff rules of conduct. Those magazines he read pictured rich gamblers wearing bowties standing alongside bathing beauties and movie actors, all of them flashing exactly the same broad smiles that had become his trademark. It was obvious that a good smile was the passkey to American success.

Carrying his small suitcase again, Joe hitchhiked across Los Angeles to Santa Anita racetrack. He made his way through a sea of pansies planted around the track to a gate at the backstretch, where a guard in a baggy suit and a police hat stopped him.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Kokomo Joe: The Story of the First Japanese American Jockey in the United States by John Christgau”

Read from Chapter 1 of Breathing in the Fullness of Time by William Kloefkorn:

"Desire. Without it, you might as well pack up and go home. Fran Welch, Coach Welch, had said this when the season began, then repeated it at frequent but irregular intervals as the season moved along. By now, I had decided I no longer wanted to play college football. So I turned in my gear and went home, but not before Coach Welch gave me an asschewing I'll not live long enough to forget. Before the chewing began, though, he wanted to know why in the name of Christ I was quitting.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Breathing in the Fullness of Time by William Kloefkorn”

Read from Chapter 1, "Hurricane" from How to Cook a Tapir: A Memoir of Belize by Joan Fry:

"When I had announced my wedding plans to my parents, they were appalled. They disapproved of Aaron's politics. They disapproved of the fact that he, an older man—he was a graduate student—was taking me, a sophomore at the University of Michigan, on a "working honeymoon" for a year in the jungle. Like most people, they had no idea where British Honduras was. Africa? An island off the coast of China? Only my German-born grandfather, who had run away to sea at fourteen, knew it was a tiny Central American country the size of Massachusetts, south of Mexico and east and north of Guatemala. Its entire eastern border faced the Caribbean as though the country were sprawled on its side, facing the azure half-moon of the earth's second-largest barrier reef. Along its spine grew some of Central America's most pristine rainforest. That's where Aaron and I were going—where the Maya lived.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: How to Cook a Tapir: A Memoir of Belize by Joan Fry”