Last month Denise and I took our grandsons to their local library to sign them up for the summer reading program with swag, recognition and motivation to read. And I was thinking "I'm jealous, I wish I could be in a summer reading program."
But now thanks to the Eighth Day Books in Wichita, Kansas I can. I 've known the folks at Eighth Day Books since 2009. They even carried the original The Book Shopper: A Life in Review when no one else did. The store is owned and operated by Warren Farha who has a storefront house crammed with books. I've written a couple postsabout them in the past. They used to publish a kick-ass book catalog which was an education in itself.
Now you can join a summer reading program for serious adult readers.
Here are the details from their Facebook Page.
Hello Eighth Day Readers!! Please join us for summer reading BINGO starting June 20th! Anyone is eligible to play. Please see the rules below as well as the BINGO card attached. Come to the store or call if you have questions!
EDB 2025 Summer Reading Rules
1. Use the categories in the Eighth Day Bingo grid to help you decide your summer reading list!
2. Any books read between June 20, 2025 and September 22, 2025 are eligible to count towards a bingo.
3. A bingo consists of reading 5 books in five different categories that correspond to squares going across, down, or diagonal.
4. For every bingo, you earn a raffle ticket that makes you eligible to win a $100 Eighth Day Books gift card, a $50 Eighth Day Books gift card, or an Eighth Day mug.
5. Signup by submitting your name, email, and phone number at the Eighth Day front counter or by calling the store at (316) 683-9446. Once we have your info we will give you your bingo card or email it to you upon request.
6. Everyone’s a winner! Anyone who signs up for bingo and reads at least one book this summer will be invited to a social at Eighth Day Books (Date and Time TBD) that will include an exclusive in-store sale!
An Important Note: The goal of Summer Bingo is to encourage people to read as a community and promote fun, local discussions about good books. If you have questions about whether a particular book qualifies for a particular category, please feel free to ask us. Our goal is not to be super technical in what qualifies for a particular category! Also, we will accept bingo submissions on the honors system but will limit cards to one per customer.
When & Where. On Thursday evening, May 22nd The Atlanta History Center hosted military historian Rick Atkinson in conversation with history professor Patrick Allitt. Atkinson was on tour promoting the second book in his Revolution Trilogy The Fate of the Day The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780
Attendance. The well-airconditioned McElreath auditorium seats 417 people and it was over 90 percent full. For non-AHC members you could purchase a ticket for $12 and you were not required to purchase the book, (but you can do that here). I already had my copy and I appreciated not having to purchase another book to see him, which is how things are done nowadays when a well-known author is on a book tour. The Atlanta History Center is in the middle of the affluent Buckhead neighborhood, and it was best dressed crowd I had ever seen at a book event. Several front rows were reserved for what I assume were the major donors, which remained empty until right before the program when they paraded up to take their seats. Many had drinks in hand.
Why I Went. Atkinson is also the author the Liberation Trilogy about World War II. My longtime partner Denise and I attended both of those lectureswhen he was at the Decatur Library years ago. He was knowledgeable and gracious and were able to chat with him briefly. I was hoping for the same experience at the AHC, but understood that probably wasn't going to happen. The affable and erudite Allitt teed up Atkinson with brief questions, but with Atkinson there are no short answers. Allitt asked Atkinson about how he managed to fold so many the details into the book such as the terrain, the weather, the foliage and Atkinson made it clear that he did not make any of it up. Atkinson reminded us that in the 18th century people wrote extensive letters (Brits and Americans alike). There are almost 200 pages of notes and sources at the end of the book.
The conversation lasted about 45 minutes with about 20 minutes for Q & A. There was a signing of books afterwards, but I did not wait around.
Someone from the audience asked Atkinson about Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway musical "Hamilton." Atkinson said he had seen the musical and it was a "a work of genius" and "a work of art, but not history."
Final Takeaways. Atkinson does resemble another military historian and storyteller Shelby Foote, the writer of the Civil War Trilogy and the star of Ken Burns Civil War series. Coincidently, Burns has a new six-part documentary on the American Revolution coming out this fall on PBS and Atkinson said that he was interviewed for the series. Below is a video where Burns and Atkinson share a stage on Concord's (MA) Carlyle High School talking about the upcoming documentary.
Perhaps the best judge of the quality of the evening was Denise, who had not read the book, but like the majority of the audience she was thoroughly engaged by Atkinson's storytelling. Moreover, there were lessons learned by all that origins of our country were bloody, violent, and the schism between the Loyalists the rebel Americans who wanted independence rivaled the more familiar War Between the States.
Last year I reposted the "Memorial Day Archives" which gives an account of General William Tecumseh Sherman's Army of the West joining the Grand Review in Washington in May 23 and 24th, 1865.
But this year there is an addendum to the post which comes from a history book I read earlier this year--Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation (2025) by Bennett Parten.
As you would expect there are details about Sherman's March to the Sea, first to Savannah and then up through the Carolinas ending with the Joseph E. Johnston's surrender to Sherman in April, 1865. But the main thrust of the book is the logistics, and the little-known history of how the newly freed slaves joined the Army (or followed the Army). Some worked for the Union Army as cooks and builders and others were women and children (refugees) that followed near the Union Army, but were subject to deathly harassment by Confederate cavalry. Parten does not sugar-coat the suffering endured by the enslaved peoples.
Available at https://bookshop.org/lists/best-of-the-book-shopper
What ties it into Memorial Day, is that the book closes with Sherman's Army of the West marching through the streets of Washington D.C. during the Grand Review, but Parten adds to its historical significance because behind Sherman's army were the freed families that had followed Sherman from Georgia through the Carolinas and Virginia had joined the parade. In the words of one observer, it was "more touching in some ways than the proud passing of soldiers."
In the Epilogue, Parten summarizes the campaign differently than militarily. He writes, "...like Yorktown, Gettysburg and Selma, Sherman's March to the Sea was a landmark moment in the history of American freedom."
A more complete review of the Parten book can be read if you scroll down at Reading Notes 2025.
One of the few authors I would make any effort to see will be at the Atlanta History Center on Thursday evening, May 22nd. My partner Denise and I saw the author twice at the Decatur Public Library when he was promoting the final two books of his Liberation Trilogy about America’s role in World War II. He was informative and gracious and signed a book for her father—-a World War II vet—with “Thank you for your service” which he cherished. (For details see this 2013 posting "Remembering Your Father with Rick Atkinson,"
The photo of Saratoga is courtesy of Francis Walker one of the founding fathers of the Gravity’s Rainbow Support Group. This two-person reading club began in June of 2020 during the Pandemic to wrangle Thomas Pynchon’s signature novel (after all we had the time). We are currently reading The Fate of the Day and you can take a peek at our notes by scrolling here.
Our discussions have included how General George Washington did an about face on vaccinations. Originally, he was an anti-vaxxer but then realized that the benefits of vaccination far outweighed the negatives (just as they do today). The rate of how smallpox ravaged his troops compared to adverse reactions to inoculations, though primitive by today’s standards changed his mind:
Among the most consequential decisions Washington would ever make was to reverse his earlier resistance to inoculating soldiers against smallpox, a disease he acknowledged as “the greatest of all calamities.” Outbreaks had devastated the army, including regiments retreating from Canada…. Crude inoculation, which required smearing active viral pus in a small incision on the arm or thigh, typically resulted in a mortality rate of less than 2 percent, and often much lower, compared to 15 percent (probably closer to 30%), and often much higher, for those sickened naturally. Yet inoculation required two weeks of preparation with purgatives and a proper diet, and then a month of isolation while the patient recovered. Page 88
Considering May-the-Fourth-Be-With-You-Day is upon us; I cannot help but be reminded of this book, which I enjoyed so much that it made The Book Shopper’s Best Books Read in 2019 list (along with W.G. Sebald and Alastair Horne). Visit the recaphere.
Last month my longtime partner Denise, our friend Maggie from Knoxville and I met in Chattanooga to catch up. We spent the afternoon strolling the Tennessee (River) Walk which is in the Arts District of Chattanooga. We stopped at the River Gallery and naturally one of the narrative sculptures by Daniel Lai caught my attention. To the unsophisticated museum goer such as myself, I immediately saw it as blog worthy "book art."
The piece shown is entitled Lost in a Book. More information about Lai (a self-taught artist of Chinese descent from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia" with a PhD from the University of Tennessee) and his work are available at the gallery's web page.
In keeping up with the times, here are some bullet points to what I have been doing since the last posting:
1. I completed the three-session workshop series, Writing Family History at the DeKalb History Center. I was fortunate to have several guest speakers willing to share their expertise. One was my cousin Jackie Fehrenbach from West Lafayette, Indiana, an experienced genealogist who addressed the group along with Tamika Strong from the Auburn Avenue Research Library. Both provided guidance on what sources are available to family researchers who are just starting out. In the final session Keith Chandler from my old Turner Broadcasting days shared his experience in putting his family history together in a book entitled The Five of Us. These are stories from a group of siblings growing up in Ferriday, Louisiana. What we lacked in numbers at the workshop sessions we made up in dedication and connection in the workshop's goal of capturing family histories.
2. Early Spring is a busy time for me doing my Destination: Books popups at the Wylde Center in Oakhurst and The Carter Center’s Freedom Farmer’s Market. I work the tables selling many books on gardening and sustainability and any subject that is a degree of separation from those topics.
One thing I enjoy most about selling books is purchasing books for inventory. Always a book shopper.
3. My book group,The Gravity’s Rainbow Support Group (GRSG) is closing on its fifth year of anniversary. Actually, it is not a group, but rather just an old college chum Francis (Indiana University) and I discussing books online. It began during the pandemic with Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) and we’ve since moved on to a mix of literature, history and anything else we both fancy. Shown here is our mascot the V-2 Rocket, one of the main characters in the book.
The advantage of a two-person book group is that it is easy to agree on what to read next.
4. Gardening and Reading and Reading about Gardening. These activities calm my uneasy mind. One book that has struck a chord is A Gardener at the End of the World (2024) by Maine writer Margot Anne Kelley. Written during the Pandemic, it is a mix of gardening diary and Yankee common sense.
A fellow Atlanta-based blogger Cal Gough posted a review of my A Father's Letters: Connecting Past to Present here on his personal blog. A retired librarian from the Atlanta Public Library system, Cal began his Book Lovers Blog in 2008, which he mothballed in 2024.
But you can't keep a good blogger down and Cal now posts regularly on his personal blog. He is a discriminating, prolific reader and he likes to share his insights.
He mentions in his review how I gave him a copy at the recent Decatur Friends of the Library Book Sale (available for purchasehere). But it was more like I cornered him. He was trapped waiting in line to pay with his shopping bag of books. What choice did he have?
What most impressed me about Cal's review is how he captured the nuances of what I was trying to accomplish.
When compared to the off seasons of professional basketball and football, baseball has the longest period of dormancy with its listless weeks of player transactions and replays of the previous season. Between the World Series and Opening Day, there is little to fuel one’s baseball interest. Another megastar signing with the Dodgers? MLB network’s ad nauseum repeats of baseball movies? It is not enough to relieve me of my blahs.
My personal remedy is to crack open the best lengthy baseball book I can find. In previous years it has been Roger Angell’s book on David Cone, Jimmy Breslin’s book on the 1962 New York Mets, and one year it was David Maraniss’s biography of Jim Thorpe. I know at first the latter seems out of place, but Thorpe in addition to winning the decathlon in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and being one of the early stars of professional football, also played parts of six seasons with the baseball New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds.
Initially, this year’s offerings looked bleak. I just couldn’t go back to Norman Macht’s three-volume history of Connie Mack the owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, which I started years ago. Macht provides excruciating details on Mack’s life and his teams. Mack holds the major league record with the most wins and losses as a manager (3731-3948) and the lengthiest baseball biography (~2000 pages).
But then I recalled reading a promising review of Howard Bryant’s biography of Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original and picked up a copy. I started the book in early December before Henderson died on December 20th at the age of 65. But rather than talk about Rickey’s twenty-five-year career with eight teams, and as a career leader in runs scored (2295), stolen bases (1406) and not surprisingly, caught steaIing (335) I prefer to focus on what makes this biography something that pulled me through the dead zone of the baseball winter.
Historical context
From the very opening chapters, what sets this baseball biography apart from most is Bryant’s diligence in mirroring Henderson’s career with the racial history of America is the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Born in Chicago on Christmas Day, 1958, Rickey’s mother Bobbie Ray soon returned to her mother’s home in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and eventually in 1968 moved to Oakland with Rickey and his siblings seeking a better life.
At the beginning of World War II, workers were such in demand in the shipyards around the Bay Area, that factories opened their doors and hired black workers. Many lived in Oakland, where the black population grew from around 8500 in 1940 to 40,000 by 1945. Eventually, the ship building facilities closed, but the blacks remained, and Oakland became an epicenter of the black community. By the time Rickey reached middle school, Oakland’s black population exceeded 120,000. Far from perfect, Oakland was highly segregated, but it was much better than the violence and the lack of opportunity in the Jim Crow South.
Oakland was home to The Pointer Sisters and the founders of The Black Panther Party Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, but the area also produced some of the greatest athletes in sports history—basketball Hall of Famer Bill Russell and baseball greats Joe Morgan and Frank Robinson. Aficionados of the sport will recognize the second-generation players who had very good careers as major leaguers: Dave Stewart, Lloyd Moseby, Gary Pettis, Bip Roberts, and of course Rickey Henderson. All these players grew up playing sports in Oakland.
Baseball Stories
But there is no shortage of baseball stories in Rickey. Not only is Rickey a colorful character, but Bryant takes great care in separating the man and myth and often refers to Henderson by his first name – just as Henderson often referred to himself in the third person. (In one game Henderson tells first baseman J.T. Snow to tell his pitcher to quit throwing over to first: “Rickey tired. Rickey ain’t running today.”)
Playing football, baseball and basketball in high school, Rickey could barely read until he was tutored by a Double-A teammate, the pitcher Mike Norris (who had a 10-year career in Oakland). In contrast Rickey had excellent math skills (obsessed by numbers) and was known in every clubhouse as a shrewd card player. He wasn't a high stakes gambler, nor did he take drugs, and he lived modestly. However, like many players Pay Equals Respect and being the highest paid player on the team or at your position was paramount.
Since Henderson played for so many teams in his quarter of a century career, you get glimpses into the friendships and rivalries. In Oakland as a rookie, Henderson credits Billy Martin for his early success as a base stealer although Bryant spares no detail on Martin's volatile and racist persona. Jose Canseco was overpaid and immature in Henderson's view. While with the Yankees (1985-89), Henderson had the respect of Don Mattingly but like all Yankee players suffered from indignities from Yankee owner George Steinbrenner (especially Dave Winfield).
Because Rickey was self-conscious of being inarticulate, he purposely kept the predominantly white New York sportswriters at a distance. In turn they often characterized him as hotdog for his bat flipping, pulling the jersey during his home run and catching fly balls with his infamous snatch-catch. Henderson was often characterized as lazy because Henderson would take himself out of the lineup especially a day game after a night game. But in his defense, Henderson knew the toll that base stealing took on his body and he wanted to preserve it (and he did, since he played 25 years). His love of the game was undeniable, playing two years of semi-pro baseball AFTER his last major league game.
The Legacy
What separates Bryant’s biography from most baseball books is that he addresses the Henderson legacy. He reminds us that Henderson was a product of this times, which include the early years of player free agency. The fans resented the burgeoning player salaries culminating in the 50 days strike in 1981. But a player like Henderson growing up in Oakland learned not to back down and play the game the way that he wanted to. (Or course the league now promotes more entertainment -- more bat flips and action on the basepaths.)
Statistics often speak for themselves and can seem irrefutable, but Bryant goes beyond the numbers to show Henderson's greatness and but is undeterred on revealing Rickey's faults. Bryant allows the reader to judge for him or herself the merits of his personality and his baseball talents. It’s a book that give Henderson’s legacy a cornerstone. One certainly cannot opine about Rickey Henderson without reading this book. And in the bleak days of January and February season, it is my highlight reel of a baseball book.
A short but excellent interview with Howard Bryant when the book first came out.
During this month of January, while in hibernation, I have been devoting my energy (fueled by holiday cookies) preparing for a workshop I am moderating at the DeKalb History Center located in the courthouse, downtown Decatur. It started with my latest book A Father's Letters: Connecting Past to Presentwhich came out early last year. In July 2024 I did a workshop about the book and with the encouragement of the History Center it has been expanded.
One take away from the previous workshop is that participants feel a kinship with the like-minded individuals, which makes for a good exchange of ideas and thoughts.
Moreover, this is the time of year that reminds people about families, and you may have a made a resolution that 2025 will be the year you are moving forward on capturing those important memories. This workshop can help.
For more details, including a syllabus visit the DeKalb History Center Workshop events page which includes times and the links to register.
