Other books that might interest you

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  Moses Fleetwood Walker: The Life...

  Charles River Editors

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  Given his legacy, many Americans today believe Jackie Robinson was the first black man to play in Major League Baseball, but that answer is wrong. As far back as the late 19th century, there had been professional baseball leagues that were every bit as segregated as any other aspect of society, but before that, there were, for a brief shining moment, there were teams of black and white men playing with and against each other.  
  	One of the first black men to play on such a team was Moses Fleetwood Walker, and he was the first who openly identified as black. In an essay entitled “African-Americans in Toledo Sports,” one author observed, “Moses Fleetwood Walker's promising but all too short professional baseball career mirrors the experience of most of the great African American ballplayers before the Negro Leagues began play in the early twentieth century. Walker was a gifted defensive catcher and adequate offensive player, but his career would be cut short by racism…Walker, well educated for a man of any race in the late 19th century, respond to this racism first with ambivalence, later with anger, and finally with prose. Walker's seminal work, Our Home Colony put him directly in line with the thoughts and words of future leader Marcus Garvey in his call for a separation of the races and a return of African Americans to Africa.”  
  	As racism and segregation successfully pushed black players out of professional baseball, it was all but forgotten that professional baseball had once been integrated before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, ensuring that the contributions of Walker and other early black athletes would be obscured and then eclipsed.

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  But you are in France Madame -...

  Catherine P M Berry

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  At the collège for a parent-teacher interview, I met my daughter outside in the courtyard and she showed me up to her classroom. Her teacher was busy chatting, so we waited patiently in the corridor. When he did come out, he indicated that the meeting would take place downstairs and headed off with us in tow. Before sitting down, I introduced myself using my first name, and put out my hand to be shaken. He mumbled back his full name as he took my hand, although I suspect he would have been shocked if I had actually dared use it. By this stage, I had already understood that teachers did not expect to be questioned about their practices. Of course, I did—question him, that is; politely and almost deferentially. There was a slight pause, as he dipped his head to better digest what he had heard. Then, with the assurance of a perfect, unarguable answer, he replied, “But you are in France, Madame”. Some months before, my husband, three children and I had casually unzipped and discarded our comfortable Australian lifestyle and slipped on life in the country of haute couture. On arrival, there was no celebrity designer waiting for us, ready to pin and fit our new life to us; so we threw it on and wore it loosely, tightly, uncomfortably, any old how—until we learned for ourselves how to trim, hem and stitch à la française. This book is testament to the joyous, but not always easy, journey that we took along the way. 
  Our story But you are in France, Madame was written from the heart. If you love France, reading about France, are curious about the lives of others or are planning your own trip to France, then this might just be the book for you.

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  A Season in the Sun

  Roger Kahn

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  Through visiting the game’s players and veterans of all ages and skill levels, a writer chronicles the state of baseball in the summer of 1976. For one full baseball season in 1976, Roger Kahn returned to his favorite sport to see how it was doing and find out whether it still had the same old magic. His search led him from small college teams in rural Arkansas, whose every member hopes to make the Majors, to Houston for a look at the financial disaster of the Astros and the Astrodome, and to Los Angeles to explore the modern miracle of Walter O’Malley’s Dodgers. It brought him interviews with old friends like restaurateur Stan Musial, boat salesman Early Wynn, and the courageous baseball maverick Bill Veeck, now owner of the Chicago White Sox. He was able to observe a superb New England Class A team that plays to empty stands because of TV, and the phenomenon of baseball enthusiasm on Roberto Clemente’s Caribbean island. Finally, it gave him the chance to get to know the incomparable Johnny Bench and to spend part of the 1976 Yankees-Reds World Series in the company of the Series’ most valuable player. More than a book about baseball, A Season in the Sun, like Kahn’s classic The Boys of Summer, is a warm and affectionate evocation of small-town and big-city America.Praise for Roger Kahn “He can epitomize a player with a single swing of the pen.”—TimeMagazine “Kahn is the best baseball writer in the business.”—Stephen Jay Gould, New York Review of Books “Kahn has the almost unfair gift of easy, graceful writing.”—Boston Herald

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  Dying to Survive - Updated...

  Rachael Keogh

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  Rachael Keogh was catapulted into the public consciousness when a shocking image of her needle-ravaged arms – skin burnt from injecting heroin into her wasted veins – made front pages around the country. Desperate for help, she made a public appeal to secure one of just 27 detox beds in Ireland so that she could reclaim her life from the drugs that had consumed it. What followed was an extraordinary story of grit and determination as she embarked on her recovery journey.
  Dying to Survive is Rachael's classic, bestselling addiction memoir, now with a new introduction reflecting on her struggles with relapse and what has changed about the drugs culture in Ireland.
  'The best book by far about the drugs explosion in Dublin' Irish Independent
  'This book should be on the school curriculum' Evening Echo
  'This is an incredible story, told completely straight – no sensationalism, no self-pity and plenty of wicked humour thrown in. Gripping, extraordinary and so shocking you have to keep reminding yourself that this really happens – this is one all teenagers and parents should read.' Evening Echo
  'Through sheer grit and determination, Rachael pulled herself out of the hell she was living in … what an achievement. She is an inspiration.' Alison O'Reilly, Mail on Sunday

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  A Job for all Seasons - My Small...

  Phyllida Barstow

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  Many smallholders have plunged in at the deep end and learnt the hard way, through experience.
  
  But Phyllida Barstow, author of the childhood autobiography My Animals and Other Family, was already involved in animal husbandry when,
  
  as a young woman, she embarked on her own smallholding enterprise.
  
  Here is her lively, informative and witty account of her first-hand experience throughout her lifetime in Gloucestershire, with chickens, dogs, cats, horses, sheep, peacocks, alpacas and even honey bees.
  
  As she points out, smallholding is not a summer idyll but, truly, a job for all seasons, all hours, all weathers. She also has to deal with fallen stock, pest control, disease outbreaks and slaughter.
  
  Her tips include those on animal handling, training, breeding and delivery. Her wry and practical attitude towards her animals is imbued with respect and often affection for her charges.
  
  This account of the realities of modern smallholding is both entertaining and informative.

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  A Tale of Two Murders

  Lara Thompson

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  On the night of October 3, 1922, as Edith Thompson and her husband, Percy, were walking home from the theatre, a man sprang out of the darkness and stabbed Percy to death. The assailant was none other than Edith's lover, Freddy Bywaters. When the police discovered his relationship with Edith, she denied knowledge of the attack but was arrested as his accomplice. Her passionate love letters to Bywaters, read out loud at the ensuing trial, sealed her fate, even though Bywaters insisted Edith had no part in planning the murder. They were both hanged. Freddy was demonstrably guilty, but was Edith? This engrossing examination of the Ilford murder, which became a legal cause ce'le'bre in the 1920s, charts the course of the liaison in shattering detail and with masterful emotional insight, investigating what this troubling case tells us about perceptions of women, innocence, and guilt.

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