New Releases by Eliot Asinof

A “vividly, excitingly written” classic of baseball history: “The most thorough investigation of the Black Sox scandal on record” (Chicago Tribune). It was “the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America”—the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up. Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation’s leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties. “Dramatic detail . . . an admirable journalistic feat.” —The New York Times “As thrilling as a cops and robbers tome.” —The Boston Globe

At once brilliantly incisive and playful, this gripping story -with its carefree yet cutting style -takes us inside the life of its spirited narrator, Kenneth Flear, an acclaimed novelist and author of a landmark book on non-violent resistance, who is now happily ensconced within the tranquil, ivy-covered walls of a university. The undergraduates he is mentoring, inoculated with politics of the "war on terror" and prone to the allure of the corporate ladder, now appear, like Professor Flear, as models of conformity. Enter the brilliant, provocative heroine of the story, Anne Miner, a graduating senior and granddaughter of a liberal seven-term U.S. senator. Anne invites Professor Flear to join her on campus protest to disinvite and otherwise prevent President George W. Bush from delivering the keynote at her 2005 commencement. Like the careerist student body, the complacent. Tenure-minded Flear declines to join Anne''s movement When Anne single-handedly stops Bush''s address, delivering instead an incendiary rebuke of the President and the Iraq War, her triumph, tragically is at the cost of her own life. Badly shaken by Anne''s death, the vulnerable Flear turns mercenary, agreeing to write about the affair. At the point his forthcoming book appears predestined for the bestseller lists, Flare''s conscience begins to struggle against its status quo message: That Anne Miner was insane and that her actions had no political significance. By the time Flear is scheduled to appear on a nationally televised celebrity-author panel, he is fully determined, with the support of the American bookselling community, to halt the publication. As Flear strives to rectify his betrayal of Anne Miner and her mission, Eliot Asinof delivers a powerful parting salvo in the battle for the soul of America by inviting us to contemplate the meaning of her sacrifice.

"In a nationally televised event that, like everything else in his life, is precisely orchestrated by agent and money manager Gordon Stanley, Jack''s return is to dedicate Black Jack Field, the two-million-dollar ballpark he has donated to his hometown. He arrives in a white stretch limo, glamorous girlfriend at his side and the world at his feet.".

Selected as one of baseball literature''s Golden Dozen by Roger Kahn, Man on Spikes is an uncompromisingly realistic novel about a baseball player who struggles through sixteen years of personal crises and professional ordeals before finally appearing in a major league game. In a preface to this new edition, Eliot Asinof reveals the longsuffering ballplayer and friend upon which the novel is based.

A story of game-fixing during National League playoffs. In his 38-year career as a baseball umpire Ernie Kolacka never once favored a team, but now he must, to repay a debt to a Korean War buddy in trouble with gamblers.

A provocative look at the year 1919 ; focuses not only on the events but on the personalities.

The story of Garret Trapnell, who came from a distinguished military family, had an uncommonly high IQ, had multiple wives, and a life-long police record.

The incredible but true story of the most dramatic prison break of the century.

The pair committed suicide in October 1969, ostensibly as an antiwar protest, after attending a Vietnam Moratorium. Examines the attitudes of their quiet New Jersey hometown and the impact of the suicides on the community.

An exhaustive story, not just of the individual case of Laurence Blutcher, but of what happens to all black men caught up in an exclusively white system of justice.