We Love Our Ducks!

As the daughter and granddaughter of four Oregon State University grads (although for the grandparents -- one of whom was tutored by Linus Pauling -- it wasn't called that back then), I am the black sheep in the family because I LOVE MY DUCKS!!! Yes, it's true: I'm a web-footed, green-and-yellow clad Duck, through and through. But all Oregonians -- yes, even my parents -- are proud of the year the UO football team put together, representing our state in the national title game and performing well.

To commemorate the magical season, the university's newspaper, the Oregon Daily Emerald, has published a gorgeous 140-page hardbound book with pictures and descriptions of each game in the season, including the last one against Auburn. The book is called Duck Season: Oregon's Magical Flight to the National Game. It's $34.95, and it is a stunner. It even records how many pushups the Duck had to do for each game!

What a much-appreciated gift this would make for the Duck fan in your life. While I will definitely be getting one for myself, I don't think I'll buy one for my folks. Maybe I'll send a copy to my brother and sister-in-law, die-hard Louisiana State fans who will be attending the big first game in Dallas next fall.....

Day 22: The Last Boy

It's Day 22 in our 24 Days of Books, and our minds are mostly on football (especially a certain upcoming bowl game) and a little bit on basketball (for instance, the University of Connecticut women's basketball team, which just set a record for longest win streak -- they haven't lost since April 6, 2008, or the Trail Blazers, who keep finding ways to win despite injuries to half the team. I have three friends who in the past week have had, respectively knee surgery, ankle surgery, and hip surgery; perhaps they could be named honorary Blazers!). But today we're going to talk baseball -- and not my poor hapless Seattle Mariners, who can't seem to climb out of their seasons-long slump (talk about your bad case of S.A.D.) -- specifically, Mickey Mantle, the childhood hero of thousands of young girls and boys (and, let's just admit it, lots of grown-up ones as well), as we present The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood, by Jane Leavy.

Mickey Mantle, who died of cancer in 1995 at age 63, was a baseball legend. He played in twelve World Series in his first fourteen seasons and still holds World Series records for home runs, RBIs, runs, walks, extra-base hits, and total bases. In her new biography of "The Mick," Jane Leavy tackles the legend and the man. "So how do you write about a man you want to love the way you did as a child but whose actions were often unlovable? How do you reclaim a human being from caricature without allowing him to be fully human?"  Drawing on more than five hundred interviews with friends and family, teammates and opponents, and weaving in a weekend she spent interviewing Mantle for the Washington Post in 1983 (during which he wasn't on his best behavior), Leavy has produced the definitive biography of the man and the athlete, written from the mixed perspective of fan, journalist, and personal acquaintance.

Mantle led the New York Yankees to seven world championships and was voted the American League's Most Valuable Player three times. "'His aura had an aura,' said his teammate Eli Grba." Beset with injuries and an unbelievable level of expectations, his not-unfamiliar mode of "coping" was with the aid the alcohol and sexual profligacy.

Leavy, who spent much of her childhood in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, is an award-winning former sportswriter and feature writer for the Washington Post and the author of the New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax

Reviewers have this to say about her book: "Leavy comes as close as perhaps anyone ever has to answering 'What makes Mantle Mantle?'” "A masterpiece of sports biography." "She's hit a long home run." (you knew that cliche was coming, right?) Here's a review that Steve Duin wrote in the Oregonian about the book.

It's definitely the season of the Big Boy Biography. If sports isn't your bag, we've got biographies of George Washington, T.E. Lawrence (as in of Arabia), Teddy Roosevelt, Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey, Grant Wood, and Jim Thorpe (ok, we're back to sports again), among others, and the biography of Raymond Carver by Carol Sklenica just came out in paperback. Any would make a wonderful gift.

Batter Up!!! Let's Play Ball

The regular season of Major League Baseball opens Sunday night, as the Yankees take on the Red Sox. My team of choice, the Seattle Mariners (hope springs eternal) opens its season in Oakland against the Athletics on Monday. It's hard to think too much about baseball when I'm still in NCAA basketball (Go, Stanford women!) and Trail Blazers playoff mode, but I do love baseball. And I particularly love going to Seattle on a sunny day and watching the Mariners play at gorgeous Safeco field, drinking beer and eating garlic fries (in case you've been wondering how I'm able to keep my girlish figure....)

A good book to read to get you in the mood for baseball this year is the new highly acclaimed authorized biography by James Hirsch, Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend. Willie Mays is arguably the greatest player in baseball history, still revered for the passion he brought to the game. With 3,283 hits, 660 home runs, and 338 stolen bases, he was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades.Willie is perhaps best known for "The Catch" -- his breathtaking over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. But he was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation.

Bob Costas, broadcaster for NBC Sports and Major League Baseball Network calls this book "the complete and definitive biography of the 'Say Hey Kid.'" Play ball!

Day Eighteen: Basketball for All!

Welcome to Day Eighteen of The 24 Days of Books! In honor of the Portland Trail Blazers oh-so-impressive comeback victory last night over the Phoenix Suns, today we're going to talk BASKETBALL!! Specifically, two books. The first is The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, by Bill Simmons. This monster of a book (more than 700 pages) is equal parts history and analysis. Simmons, a regular columnist on ESPN.com, summarizes the history of the league, discusses his personal fandom, analyzes Most Valuable Player choices through the years, and dissects the careers of the league's all-time best players.

He also includes a fascinating "What If" chapter that counts down the top thirty-three "what ifs" in NBA history, in reverse order, building up to #1: "What if the 1984 draft turned out differently?" The 1984 draft, you might recall, is the one in which the Trailblazers passed up on Michael Jordan and instead drafted Sam Bowie. (He also presents the "three great what-ifs in my life that don't involve women," the first being "What if I had gone west or south for college? This haunts me and will continue to haunt me until the day I die. I could have chosen a warm-weather school with hundreds of gorgeous sorority girls, and instead I went to an Irish Catholic school on a Worcester hill with bone-chilling 20-degree winds....")

This book would make a wonderful gift for the basketball fan on your list. And, while you're at it, take a look at When the Game was Ours, by Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson, with Jackie MacMullan. This remarkable collaboration by two NBA legends recounts the decades long journey of their relationship, from bitter rivals to lifelong friends.

So, there you have it, two great gifts for the sports lover in your life. For many more gift-giving ideas, check out our gargantuan December newsletter, which you can read by clicking here.

2009 National Outdoor Book Awards

Here are the just-announced winners of the 2009 National Outdoor Book Awards:

• History-Biography: Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley (Harper).
• Nature and the Environment: Our Living Earth by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
• Design & Artistic Merit: Lars Jonsson's Birds illustrated by Lars Jonsson (Princeton University Press)
• Outdoor Literature: Halfway to Heaven by Mark Obmascik (Free Press)
• Natural History Literature: Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys by Rob Dunn (Smithsonian Books)
• Instructional: Girl on the Rocks: A Woman's Guide to Climbing with Strength, Grace and Courage by Katie Brown, photographs by Ben Moon (Globe Pequot Press/Falcon Guides)
• Outdoor Adventure: Guide to the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument by Duwain Whitis and Barbara Vinson (RiverMaps)
• Nature: Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America by Roger Tory Peterson (Houghton Mifflin)
• Children's: Whistling Wings by Laura Goering, illustrated by Laura Jacques (Sylvan Dell Publishing)

Agree? Disagree? Others you would recommend?

The National Outdoor Book Awards (NOBA) is the outdoor world's largest and most prestigious book award program. It is a non-profit, educational program, sponsored by the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation, Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education, and Idaho State University. The purpose of the awards is to recognize and encourage outstanding writing and publishing. Reviews of these titles and a list of the honorable mentions can be found at the NOBA Website.

Best of the Bests

It's that wonderful time of year when we get in all of different books in the "Best American" series for 2009. This is what we've got for you: The Best American Short Stories 2009, edited by Alice Sebold;, The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver; The Best American Travel Writing 2009, edited by Simon Winchester; The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2009, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert; The Best American Mystery Stories 2009, edited by Jeffery Deaver; The Best American Sports Writing 2009, edited by Leigh Montville; The Best American Crime Reporting 2009, edited by Jeffrey Toobin; The Best American Comics 2009, edited by Charles Burns; and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. We also have The Best New Stories from the South 2009, edited by Madison Smartt Bell, and The Best American Poetry 2009, edited by David Wagoner.

I haven't had a chance to look closely at each of them yet, but I did notice that Oregon is well represented in this year's essay collection, with essays by both Brian Doyle and Barry Lopez -- wahoo!! These books usually go fast, so come on down while the picking is good.

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjacks...

...Hold on. Better skip the peanuts, given what's going on in peanut-land these days. But baseball days are definitely back! Spring training is in full swing (pun surely intended), and - best of all - Junior is back! (and if you don't know what I mean by that, you are truly not a Mariner's fan)

So it must be time for some baseball books, no? A couple of baseball books are getting heavy press these days, because controversy usually generates great press -- for better or worse. The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci, tells about the most storied (and likely most hated) franchise in baseball -- maybe in all of sports! When Torre took over the team in 1996, not many considered his success likely. Twelve tumultuous and triumphant years later, Torre left having led the team to six American League pennants and four World Series titles. He doesn't mince words when it comes to spilling the beans on his big-name players (can you really mince words and spill beans in the same sentence? hmmmm. I'm no chef).

Matt McCarthy writes about the less heralded side of baseball: the minor leagues. In Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit, McCarthy tells of his year as a left-handed pitcher for the Provo Angels, Anaheim's minor league affiliate in Utah, violating sport's most sacred rule: what happens in the locker room stays in the locker room -- and his former teammates are not happy. The book unquestionably opens the door wide to the not-always-commendable behavior behind the scenes. Some have accused him of embellishment or even fabrication. But it's yet to be seen whether he will be seen as the Jim Bouton (Ball Four) of his generation or as the James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) of baseball.

On a less controversial note, popular sportswriter and bestselling author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Liar's Poker, The Blind Side) reveals the inside story of fatherhood in his new book Home Game (coming in May). When he became a father, Michael Lewis found himself expected to feel things that he didn’t feel, and to do things that he couldn’t see the point of doing. At first this made him feel guilty, until he realized that all around him fathers were pretending to do one thing, to feel one way, when in fact they felt and did all sorts of things, then engaged in what amounted to an extended cover-up. Lewis decided to keep a written record of what actually happened immediately after the birth of each of his three children. This book is that record. But it is also something else: maybe the funniest, most unsparing account of ordinary daily household life ever recorded from the point of view of the man inside. The remarkable thing about this story isn’t that Lewis is so unusual. It’s that he is so typical. The only wonder is that his wife has allowed him to publish it.