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Chris von der Ahe knew next to nothing about base¬ball when he
risked his life's savings to found the franchise that would become
the St. Louis Cardinals. Yet the German-born beer garden proprietor
would become one of the most important--and funniest--figures in
the game's history.
Von der Ahe picked up the team for one reason--to sell more beer.
Then he helped gather a group of ragtag professional clubs together
to create a maverick new league that would fight the haughty
National League, reinventing big-league baseball to attract
Americans of all classes. Sneered at as "The Beer and Whiskey
Circuit" because it was backed by brewers, distillers, and saloon
owners, their American Association brought Americans back to
enjoying baseball by offering Sunday games, beer at the ballpark,
and a dirt-cheap ticket price of 25 cents.
The womanizing, egocentric, wildly generous Von der Ahe and his
fellow owners filled their teams' rosters with drunks and
renegades, and drew huge crowds of rowdy spectators who screamed at
umpires and cheered like mad as the Philadelphia Athletics and St.
Louis Browns fought to the bitter end for the 1883 pennant.
In "The Summer of Beer and Whiskey," Edward Achorn re-creates this
wondrous and hilarious world of cunning, competition, and boozing,
set amidst a rapidly transforming America. It is a classic American
story of people with big dreams, no shortage of chutzpah, and love
for a brilliant game that they refused to let die.
The vivid, behind-the-scenes story of perhaps the most
consequential political moment in American history—Abraham
Lincoln’s history-changing nomination to lead the Republican
Party in the 1860 presidential election Illinois lawyer Abraham
Lincoln had a record of political failure. In 1858, he had lost a
celebrated Senate bid against incumbent Stephen Douglas, his second
failed Senate run, and had not held public office since one term in
Congress a decade earlier. As the Republican National Convention
opened in mid-May 1860 in Chicago, powerful New York Senator
William Seward was the overwhelming favorite for the presidential
nomination, with notables like Salmon Chase and Edward Bates in the
running. Few thought Lincoln stood a chance—though stubborn
Illinois circuit Judge David Davis had come to fight for his friend
anyway. Such was the political landscape as Edward
Achorn’s The Lincoln Miracle opens on Saturday, May
12, 1860. Chronicling the tense political drama as it unfolded over
the next six days, Achorn explores the genius of Lincoln’s quiet
strategy, the vicious partisanship tearing apart America, the
fierce battles raging over racism and slavery, and booming Chicago
as a symbol of the modernization transforming the nation. Closely
following the shrewd insiders on hand, from Seward power broker
Thurlow Weed to editor Horace Greeley — bent on stopping his
former friend, Seward—Achorn brings alive arguably the most
consequential political story in America’s history. From smoky
hotel rooms to night marches by the Wide Awakes, the new Republican
youth organization, to fiery speeches on the floor of the giant
convention center called The Wigwam, Achorn portrays a political
climate even more contentious than our own today, out of which the
seemingly impossible long shot prevailed, to the nation’s
everlasting benefit. As atmospheric and original as Achorn’s
previous Every Drop of Blood, The Lincoln
Miracle is essential reading for any Lincoln aficionado as it
is for anyone who cares about our nation’s history.
A brilliantly conceived and vividly drawn story--Washington, D.C.
on the eve of Abraham Lincoln's historic second inaugural address
as the lens through which to understand all the complexities of the
Civil War By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than
700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. After
a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded
Washington's Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take
the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to
give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history,
stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both
sides had been wrong, and that the war's unimaginable
horrors--every drop of blood spilled--might well have been God's
just verdict on the national sin of slavery. Edward Achorn reveals
the nation's capital on that momentous day--with its mud, sewage,
and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing
spouses and power-hungry politicians--as a microcosm of all the
opposing forces that had driven the country apart. A host of
characters, unknown and famous, had converged on Washington--from
grievously wounded Union colonel Selden Connor in a Washington
hospital and the embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew
Johnson, to poet-journalist Walt Whitman; from soldiers' advocate
Clara Barton and African American leader and Lincoln
critic-turned-admirer Frederick Douglass (who called the speech "a
sacred effort") to conflicted actor John Wilkes Booth--all swirling
around the complex figure of Lincoln. In indelible scenes, Achorn
vividly captures the frenzy in the nation's capital at this crucial
moment in America's history and the tension-filled hope and despair
afflicting the country as a whole, soon to be heightened by
Lincoln's assassination. His story offers new understanding of our
great national crisis and echoes down the decades to resonate in
our own time.
The vivid, behind-the-scenes story of perhaps the most
consequential political moment in American history—Abraham
Lincoln’s history-changing nomination to lead the Republican
Party in the 1860 presidential election Illinois lawyer Abraham
Lincoln had a record of political failure. In 1858, he had lost a
celebrated Senate bid against incumbent Stephen Douglas, his second
failed Senate run, and had not held public office since one term in
Congress a decade earlier. As the Republican National Convention
opened in mid-May 1860 in Chicago, powerful New York Senator
William Seward was the overwhelming favorite for the presidential
nomination, with notables like Salmon Chase and Edward Bates in the
running. Few thought Lincoln stood a chance—though stubborn
Illinois circuit Judge David Davis had come to fight for his friend
anyway. Such was the political landscape as Edward
Achorn’s The Lincoln Miracle opens on Saturday, May
12, 1860. Chronicling the tense political drama as it unfolded over
the next six days, Achorn explores the genius of Lincoln’s quiet
strategy, the vicious partisanship tearing apart America, the
fierce battles raging over racism and slavery, and booming Chicago
as a symbol of the modernization transforming the nation. Closely
following the shrewd insiders on hand, from Seward power broker
Thurlow Weed to editor Horace Greeley — bent on stopping his
former friend, Seward—Achorn brings alive arguably the most
consequential political story in America’s history. From smoky
hotel rooms to night marches by the Wide Awakes, the new Republican
youth organization, to fiery speeches on the floor of the giant
convention center called The Wigwam, Achorn portrays a political
climate even more contentious than our own today, out of which the
seemingly impossible long shot prevailed, to the nation’s
everlasting benefit. As atmospheric and original as Achorn’s
previous Every Drop of Blood, The Lincoln
Miracle is essential reading for any Lincoln aficionado as it
is for anyone who cares about our nation’s history.
"All fans of baseball, all fans of a good story, will love this
book." -- Professor Gordon Wood, Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winner
"This is a beautifully written, meticulously researched story about
a bygone baseball era that even die-hard fans will find foreign,
and about a pitcher who might have been the greatest of all time."
-- Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer prize-winning historian Following in
the tradition of the sleeper bestseller Crazy '08, Fifty-Nine in
'84 is the story of Charles Radbourn, a brilliant major league
baseball pitcher who, in the 1884 season, won an astonishing 59
games, a record that has never been broken. Set against the
backdrop of 19th century baseball, Fifty-Nine in '84 gives readers
a glimpse of the dangerous and violent game that preceded the sport
we enjoy today.
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