Books by Brian Martin

This first biography of Barney Dreyfuss chronicles the innovative career of the Hall of Famer executive who built Forbes Field--the National League's first concrete-and-steel ballpark, into which he put $1 million of his own money - pushed for creation of the office of commissioner to govern the game and helped initiate the modern World Series.

At six-feet-six, the hulking Martin Leo Boutiliere (1872-1944) was hard to miss. Yet the many books written about Babe Ruth relegate the soft-spoken teacher and coach to the shadows. This is the first telling of the full story of the man who gave the world its most famous baseball star.

Social defence is nonviolent community resistance to aggression and repression, as an alternative to military forces. Given the enormous damage caused by military systems, social defence is an alternative worth investigating and pursuing. Since the 1980s, Jørgen Johansen and Brian Martin have been involved in promoting social defence. In this book, they provide an up-to-date treatment of the issues. They address the downsides of military systems, historical examples of nonviolent resistance to invasions and coups, key ideas about social defence, important developments since the end of the Cold War, and the role of social movements. Social defence challenges deeply embedded assumptions about violence and defence. It is also a challenge to powerful groups with vested interests in systems of organised violence, especially militaries and governments. Popular action against aggression and repression is a radical alternative - and a logical one.

In 2009 in Australia, a citizens' campaign was launched to silence public criticism of vaccination. This campaign involved an extraordinary variety of techniques to denigrate, harass and censor public vaccine critics. It was unlike anything seen in other scientific controversies, involving everything from alleging beliefs in conspiracy theories to rewriting Wikipedia entries. Vaccination Panic in Australia analyses this campaign from the point of view of free speech. Brian Martin describes the techniques used in the attack, assesses different ways of defending and offers wider perspectives for understanding the struggle. The book will be of interest to readers interested in the vaccination debate and in struggles over free speech and citizen participation in decision-making.

Most people think of the world as divided into countries, and many people identify with their "own" country. Because there's nothing natural in this, governments and others need to continually encourage identification with the nation. This serves those with power and wealth. Ruling Tactics outlines the methods commonly used to foster everyday nationalism and how they can be countered. These methods are described in a range of areas, including crime, sport, language, economics, terrorism and war. This book can serve as a practical manual for recognising how thinking is oriented towards the state, and how this sort of thinking can be changed.

The Detroit Tigers were founding members of the American League and have been the Motor City's team for more than a century. But the Wolverines were the city's first major league club, playing in the National League beginning in 1881 and capturing the pennant in 1887. This first ever history of the Wolverines covers the team's rise and abrupt fall and the powerful men behind it.

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) was one of the most eminent and controversial figures of the nineteenth century. His influence spread far beyond the country of his birth, the century in which he lived, and the Church in which he ended his life: he is not only of great importance in the history of religious thought but is known to a much wider circle for his hymns, his books, the text of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and the Oratories he founded in Birmingham and London. His religious thought laid the foundations for the second Vatican Council. He is widely loved and remembered¿by Catholics and non-Catholics alike¿as a saintly and gentle figure: yet his conversion to the Church of Rome sparked off one of the bitterest and more divisive controversies of the Victorian age, and one which lost him friends and respect, and was to sever him from his beloved University of Oxford. Brian Martin's sympathetic study combines biography with a critical assessment of Newman's achievements. He takes us through from Newman's birth in London and his school-days in Ealing to his death in the Birmingham Oratory, by way of his brilliant university career in Oxford, his leading part as an Anglican clergyman in the Oxford Movement, his conversion to Roman Catholicism, his involvement in the foundation of the National University of Ireland, and his eventual elevation to the Cardinalate. Unlike previous biographies, Dr Martin has made full use of the extensive Letters and Diaries so as to bring out the human side of this saintly man. His major works, such as his great autobiography, Apologia pro Vita sua, and his novel, Loss and Gain, are discussed in the context of his life.

Father Patrick is newly appointed to a parish in Dublin, and needs to be alone.

Attacks can backfire on attackers sometimes spectacularly. Examples include - the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police in 1991, the surveillance of Ralph Nader in 1965, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Through numerous case studies, this work aims to reveal the promising tactics that can make unfair attacks backfire.