Books published by Ivan R Dee, Inc

Today's baseball catcher stolidly goes about his duty without attracting much attention. But it wasn't always that way, as Peter Morris shows in this lively and original study. In baseball's early days, catchers stood a safe distance back of the batter without protective gear. Then the introduction of the curveball in the 1870s led them to move up directly behind home plate, even though they still wore no gloves or other protection. Extraordinary courage became the catcher's most notable requirement, but the new positioning also demanded that the catcher have lightning-fast reflexes, great hands, and a throwing arm with the power of a cannon. With so great a range of required skills, a special mystique came to surround the position, and it began to seem that a good catcher could single-handedly make the difference between a winning and losing team.

The only book ever to win both the Seymour Medal and the Casey Award as the best baseball book of the year, Peter Morris's magisterial encyclopedia of the national pastime will surprise, delight, and educate even the most knowledgeable fan. With its thousand-odd entries, A Game of Inches illuminates the origins of items ranging from catcher's masks to hook slides to intentional walks to baseball's reserve clause. Now with new material and completely redesigned in a one-volume paperback, the book remains endlessly fascinating, impeccably researched, and engagingly written.

The story of baseball in America begins not with the fabled Abner Doubleday but with a generation of mid-nineteenth-century Americans who moved from the countryside to the cities and brought a cherished but delightfully informal game with them.

First published for private circulation in Vienna in 1900, Arthur Schnitzler's famous play looks at the sexual morality and class ideology of his day through a series of sexual encounters between pairs of characters. When published publicly in 1903, it became an immediate best-seller, scandalized Viennese society, and a year later was censored. Schnitzler was accused of pornography and worse. In 1922 Freud wrote to him that "you have learned through intuition-though actually as a result of sensitive introspection-everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons." By choosing characters across the social spectrum, La Ronde offers a powerful view of how sexual contact transgresses boundaries of class. Nicholas Rudall's new translation sensitively captures the language distinctions of the representative characters in the play while providing a remarkably playable script. New in the Plays for Performance series.

Once in a great while there appears a baseball player who transcends the game and earns universal admiration from his fellow players, from fans, and from the American people. Such a man was Hank Greenberg, whose dynamic life and legendary career are among baseball's most inspiring stories. The Story of My Life tells the story of this extraordinary man in his own words, describing his childhood as the son of Eastern European immigrants in New York; his spectacular baseball career as one of the greatest home-run hitters of all time and later as a manager and owner; his heroic service in World War II; and his courageous struggle with cancer. Tall, handsome, and uncommonly good-natured, Greenberg was a secular Jew who, during a time of widespread religious bigotry in America, stood up for his beliefs. Throughout a lifetime of anti-Semitic abuse he maintained his dignity, becoming in the process a hero for Jews throughout America and the first Jewish ballplayer elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The second wave of U.S. immigration, from 1870 to 1920, brought more than 26 million men, women, and children onto American shores. June Granatir Alexander's history of the period underscores the diversity of peoples who came to the United States in these years and emphasizes the important shifts in their geographic origins-from northern and western Europe to southern and eastern Europe-that led to the distinction between old and new immigrants.

This important book explains how Arabs are closed in a circle defined by tribal, religious, and cultural traditions. David Pryce-Jones examines the tribal forces which, he believes, ¿drive the Arabs in their dealings with each other and with the West.¿ In the postwar world, he argues, the Arabs reverted to age-old tribal and kinship structures, a closed circle from which they have been unable to escape, and in which violence is systemic. ¿A healthy corrective, a thought-provoking study.¿¿David K. Shipler, New York Times Book Review.

Here's the perfect leisure-time and take-along book for baseball fans: a compendium of challenging quizzes, crossword puzzles, rules interpretation problems, brain teasers, humorous anecdotes, cartoons, and eye-opening statistical charts, all about baseball and all drawn from more than sixty years of the most popular baseball publication in America, Baseball Digest. Tumbling from its pages are the stories of old-time stars like Ruth, Feller, DiMaggio, and Williams as well as such recent luminaries as Cal Ripken, Nolan Ryan, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Derek Jeter. Trivia buffs will be challenged by questions such as What manager has been ejected from the most games? What pitchers have recorded three wins in one World Series? What St. Louis Cardinal hit two grand slams in one inning?

Hailed as "a creative genius" (TLS) and "a singular American visionary" (New York Times ), James Purdy may be best known for his remarkable novels, but he was also an astonishing playwright who wrote nine full-length and twenty short plays. Purdy was one of the few contemporary American writers capable of writing tragedy-Tennessee Williams called him "a uniquely gifted man of the theater." This collection presents four riveting and beautifully crafted works: Brice, The Paradise Circus, Where Quentin Goes, and Ruthanna Elder. Each explores a range of emotional and familial tangles, as fathers betray their sons and squander their inheritances, siblings compete for parental affection, and husbands and wives try to salvage meaning from their broken marriages.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning constitutional historian Leonard Levy here collects eight of his most important essays of recent years. Written with his characterstic erudition, clarity, directness, and verve, these explorations into the history of the law are at once an entertainment and an education. One of the clearest and most eloquent liberal interpreters of law. New York Times Book Review.

Situates 1939 at the end of the early cold war between the Soviet Union, France, and Britain, and shows how anti-communism was the major cause of the failure to form an alliance against Hitler.

In Looking for Farrakhan, Florence Levinsohn has written an unconventional biography. Starting from historical fact, her book is a meditation on the black experience in America that helped transform the young Eugene Walcott into Louis Farrakhan; on the circumstances that brought him to power as leader of the Nation of Islam; on the policies and programs of this curious but imposing organization; and, most of all, on Farrakhan himself. Ms. Levinsohn's thoughtful search for the man behind the myth is the product of a lifetime of reporting and writing on black life in America. With the eye of an accomplished journalist and the diligence of a bloodhound, she traces Farrakhan's rise from his boyhood as a West Indian in Boston - acolyte of his Episcopal church, top student, winning track star, talented violinist and later an accomplished popular singer, the Charmer - through his hidden anger and resentment to his leadership of the Nation and his role in the larger black community. Her portrait uncovers a religious zealot who sees himself in a long tradition of black saviors, who senses white hostility everywhere - and is often right. Along the way, Ms. Levinsohn considers the content of Farrakhan's character and the substance of his ideas. And she presents a man far more complex, far more dangerous than the one seen in ten-second sound bites on the evening news.

A long-awaited collection of the most important writings from a lifetime of work by one of the most influential Jewish thinkers in American life over the last half-century. 'He has written with unique clarity, penetration, belief, and sophistication.'NEugene B. Borowitz, in his Foreword to the book. Edited by Jonathan S. Wolf.

Radu Ioanid's account of the destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the regime of Ion Antonescu, based upon privileged access to secret East European government archives, is an unprecedented analysis of heretofore purposely hidden materials. He builds an accurate perspective on...

An unusual and illuminating account of the Iranian revolution of 1979, based upon the authorOs long conversations with the Shah in the weeks before his downfall, and upon his own 33-month experience in prisonNthe first testimony to come from a survivor of the Islamic republicOs jails.

Explores the processes of social change in the late colonial period and early years of the new republic that made a dramatic imprint on the character of American society.

Looking back at the late eighteenth century, this book shows that the United States was founded not on Christian principles at all but on Enlightenment ideas. This book makes a contribution to the debate over the separation of church and state and the role (or lack thereof) of religion in government.

Shows that the experiences of depression-era children help us understand the course of the 1930s as well as the history of American childhood. This book states that federal policy extended childhood dependence through the teen years while cultural changes reinforced this ideal of modern childhood.

A fresh and contemporary translation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People by Nicholas Rudall.

Working from a vast combined experience in professional baseball, the authors have broken down the elements of mental toughness into an easily understood package. Not only baseball players but other athletes as well as managers, coaches, and parents can learn how elements like attitude, confidence, and the ability to focus and make adjustments are built and how they can help players reach their maximum performance. With a Foreword by Tony La Russa. "A must-read for future athletes and non-athletes alike."-Mark McGwire.

The first full and authoritative biography of the father of gastronomy. MacDonogh not only chronicles Brillat's many pursuits, he also presents a fascinating picture of provincial France under the ancien regime and the dangerous years that followed its fall. The world of revolutionaries and gourmets explored with elegance and scholarship.-Observer.

An intimate personal and political history of Lyndon Johnson's frustration with the Kennedy mystique, based on exhaustive new research. Solidly researched, well written, carefully analyzed...a major contribution to recent American political history.-Thomas C. Reeves, Journal of American History.

The house of Belgium and its many houses-institutional and personal, literal and metaphoric-captured in a blend of social and cultural analysis that offers a microcosm of European society since World War II. Sensitive, perceptive, revealing, and delightfully readable. -Eugen Weber.