On My Radar (Random House Edition)

Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr and the International Hunt for His Assassin
by Hampton Sides
Knopf Doubleday/Random House
Trade Paperback (with a new Afterword)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Edgar Award Nominee
One of the Best Books of the Year: O, The Oprah Magazine, Time, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, San Francisco Chronicle


I reviewed this book in hardcover here, and later heard the author speak at the Southern Festival of Books here in Nashville.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough; the pacing is terrific and, despite knowing the outcome, the "trail" is full of surprises and insight.

From the publisher website:

On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel. The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened. As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King’s assassin that would lead them across two continents. With a blistering, cross-cutting narrative that draws on a wealth of dramatic unpublished documents, Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers, delivers a non-fiction thriller in the tradition of William Manchester's The Death of a President and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. With Hellhound On His Trail, Sides shines a light on the largest manhunt in American history and brings it to life for all to see.

SFGate.com Review



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The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing,  & Bench-Clearing Brawls - The Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime
by Jason Turbow with Michael Duca
Pantheon/Random House
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. What truly governs the Major League game is a set of unwritten rules, some of which are openly discussed (don’t steal a base with a big lead late in the game), and some of which only a minority of players are even aware of (don’t cross between the catcher and the pitcher on the way to the batter’s box). In The Baseball Codes, old-timers and all-time greats share their insights into the game’s most hallowed—and least known—traditions. For the learned and the casual baseball fan alike, the result is illuminating and thoroughly entertaining.

At the heart of this book are incredible and often hilarious stories involving national heroes (like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays) and notorious headhunters (like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale) in a century-long series of confrontations over respect, honor, and the soul of the game. With The Baseball Codes, we see for the first time the game as it’s actually played, through the eyes of the players on the field.

With rollicking stories from the past and new perspectives on baseball’s informal rulebook, The Baseball Codes is a must for every fan.

New York Times review of The Baseball Codes

Excerpt at nytimes.com

Author blog