Abby Staff Reviews

When minor league baseball coach Mike Coolbaugh was killed on the field by a line drive off the bat of hitter Tino Sanchez in the summer of 2007, it was a moment in which tragedy struck—swiftly, seemingly without reason, and irreversibly altering the lives of those connected to the incident. In Heart of the Game, S.L. Price’s haunting exploration of the years, months, and weeks leading up to the accident, tragedy does not strike so much as unfold slowly, methodically, and painfully. Price, examining the lives of Coolbaugh and Sanchez with journalistic voice and great attention to detail, brings us to the moment of Coolbaugh’s death through a narrative that is not merely biography, but a larger comment on the realities of minor league baseball. He weaves and explains a pattern of dreaming, failure and success that runs through the sport as a whole. Lovers of baseball (and baseball books) will find much food for thought in his account.

I picked up What Should I Do With My Life? about three months after graduating from college, and three hours after quitting my first job with an international human resources consulting firm. While I secretly hoped that Po Bronson might rescue my fast-fading hopes for the perfect career, marriage, and condo before the age of twenty-five, what I found instead was an enchanting collection of stories from people of all ages and walks of life who had found bliss in every setting—from post 9/11 corporate rebuilding to a catfish farm in the Mississippi Delta to the kitchen at DC's famed CakeLove Bakery. Never preachy and rarely sentimental, Bronson weaves his subjects' stories with his own recollections of success and failure. The best part? Bronson's connections to the DC area and free-form, network-heavy research methods result in a disproportionate number of distinctly Washingtonian tales. Proof that, even in a place as tough as DC, there is happiness to be found at work!

There are lots of reasons to pick up a book with a title as crazy as SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS. Mine was rather simple: The book came out during my senior year at Barnard College and as the buzz around this debut novel grew, Marisha Pessl '00 became one of Barnard's hottest-ticket alumnae. Despite my aversion to all things hot and new, and my general preference for non-fiction, I eventually gave in. I promptly fell in love with Blue Van Meer, Pessl's brilliant, angsty protagonist who is trying to make it through her senior year at a North Carolina prep school. Without giving too much away, I will say that it's a murder mystery for people who don't like murder mysteries, and one that makes excellent use of sex, drugs, several untimely deaths and exquisitely hilarious visual aids.

“Religion Junkie” probably isn’t the most elegant way to put it, but that is what I am. For those like me who flip through the Metro section of the paper to get to the Religion page, Rag and Bone by Peter Manseau is a welcome treat. Focusing on popular practices of relic worship, Manseau traveled the world over the course of several years to visit a variety of sites in a number of faith traditions. His stories of how we relate to bits and pieces of the sacred allow the reader to make comparative observations without reductionist conclusions. Whether you are a fan of travelogues, a keen observer of ritual, or just a self-proclaimed Religion Junkie, Rag and Bone will not disappoint.