Book Shelf: “Driving With The Devil,” Three Baseball Reads

Thompson’s Book Examines Roots Of Stock Car Racing

NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams reviewed Neal Thompson’s “Driving With the Devil,” which looks at the roots of stock car racing. Williams: “The story is filled with dramatic scenes and re-created conversations that would defy fact-checking — Mr. Thompson has carved out a rather narrow field in which to work by concentrating on the period from 1938 to 1952. Given that the popularity of stock-car racing exploded in the half-century since then, the book’s focus on a formative period would seem to make it of interest to a rather specialized audience.” In its “roughest patches, ‘Driving With the Devil’ is slow-going indeed. At its best, it’s a thoroughly researched account of a ‘simpler time’” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/21).

WORLDLY MATTERS: The FINANCIAL TIMES’ Christopher Bowe reviewed Mark Lamster’s “Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic Adventure That Took Baseball Around the Globe — and Made It America’s Game,” and Alan Klein’s “Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball.” Bowe wrote the books “look at the sport’s attempts to sell itself outside the U.S. in very different eras.” The latter “reads unfortunately like a corporate consultant’s report on unsuccessful efforts to build baseball internationally” (FINANCIAL TIMES, 10/21).

FLOOD WATCH: Russ Smith of the N.Y. Press and City Paper of Baltimore reviewed “A Well-Paid Slave” by Brad Snyder, which profiles late MLBer Curt Flood, whose legal challenges led to free agency in baseball. Smith writes the book is “hardly hagiography. Fans of a certain age who do recall Flood’s legal travails, as well as his noteworthy career, will be surprised and saddened to read of his alcoholism, constant philandering and financial disasters. Even his secondary career as a portrait painter ... turns out to have been a fraud.” The book is “an absorbing — and long overdue — look at Curt Flood’s life and influence. Blemishes and all, he deserves daily thanks from the multimillionaires who now fill stadiums across the country” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/21).