Barry Zalben's Favorites

"An exhilarating, splendidly illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball: told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic. From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a 'saloon in the open air'), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans), to...

"Explores why some of the world's . . . literary classics and seminal non-fiction titles were once deemed too controversial for the public to read--whether for challenging racial or sexual norms, satirizing public figures, or simply being deemed unfit for young readers. From the banning of All Quiet on the Western Front and the repeated suppression of On the Origin of Species, to the uproar provoked by Lady Chatterley's Lover, entries offer a . ....

"In this triumphant memoir, Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and pioneer of investigative journalism, recalls his beginnings as an audacious teenage newspaper reporter in the nation's capital-a winning tale of scrapes, gumshoeing, and American bedlam"--

"Elizabeth Miles is preparing for her wedding to Gideon Bates, when a menacing shadow from her past threatens to destroy the life she has built for herself in this all-new Counterfeit Lady Novel from USA Today bestselling author Victoria Thompson. The Great War is over, and Elizabeth and Gideon are busily planning their wedding and welcoming home old friends now discharged from the army. One of them, Captain Logan Carstens, the son and heir of a wealthy...

"Sergeant Hamish Macbeth--Scotland's most quick-witted but unambitious policeman--is back and may have finally met the woman of his dreams in this new mystery in M.C. Beaton's beloved, New York Times bestselling series. Hamish's new constable, Dorothy McIver, may be the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Completely bewitched by her sparkling blue eyes, Hamish spends the summer traveling with her up and down Sutherland until finally, he can take...

"For three decades, until the day he collapsed in the Brazilian surf in 1979, Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death who performed horrific experiments on the prisoners of Auschwitz, floated through South America in linen suits, keeping two steps ahead of Mossad agents, international police and the world's journalists. In this rigorusly researched factual novel--drawn almost entirely from historical documents--Olivier Guez traces Mengele's footsteps through...

"From a renowned surgeon and historian with five decades of experience comes a remarkable history of surgery's development-spanning the Stone Age to the present day-blending meticulous medical studies with lively and skillful storytelling. There are not many events in life that can be as simultaneously life-frightening and life-saving as a surgical operation. Yet, in America, tens-of-millions of major surgical procedures are performed annually but...

"What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It's a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give unto Others, Donna Leon's splendid thirty-first installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series. Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti's mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately,...

"After returning from her father-in-law's funeral in Florida, Lucy can almost hear the death knell of her part-time reporter job the instant she meets new hire Rob Callahan. He's young, ambitious, and positioning himself to become the Pennysaver's next star reporter. Adding insult to injury, Lucy only gets assigned the local St. Patrick's Day parade once Rob passes on the story. But before beer flows and bagpipes sound, Rob becomes suspected of destroying...