Books

Review > All Booked Up

Looking for a good read? Here are three of this month’s best new books.

words by > Michael J. Bandler

My Team

Larry Dierker

One-time major league pitcher, broadcaster and manager Larry Dierker is, in his own words, “living proof that any good pitcher can beat any team on a given day.” But that doesn’t make that pitcher a Hall of Famer, or even an All-Star. So what makes an all-time team? Surveying the past half century, and looking at those seasons from different points of view, Dierker’s take in My Team is that such a roster depends not necessarily on home run totals, batting averages and win-loss records, but rather on such offbeat stats as on-base and slugging averages combined, and the success rate in base stealing. This is one man’s contribution to many future Hot Stove League debates, with some results that will prove surprising—particularly in terms of players left on the bench. Chock-full of theory, history and revealing asides from other baseball veterans, it’s a major league win. (Simon & Schuster, $25)

Errors and Omissions

Paul Goldstein

Forty years of expertise in copyright law and intellectual property have made Stanford University law professor Paul Goldstein one of the go-to attorneys in his chosen, often contentious, field.

But he’ll have to get used to a dollop of literary acclaim, and a fan base that’s never cracked open a law text, thanks to his edge-of-the-seat debut novel, Errors and Omissions (the title is a shorthand legal term for professional negligence). After introducing us to the alcohol-soaked, short-tempered Michael Seeley, Goldstein’s intellectual property litigator hero, and what appears to be a simple case of film script ownership, the author seizes the reader for a mesmerizing transcontinental and transoceanic adventure. Though rooted in the present, the story traverses the decades backward, to the Hollywood blacklist and beyond to the Holocaust, with some deftly placed murders and betrayals along the way. As the plot races forward, Goldstein paints his characters (even minor ones) sharply, against a vivid variety of landscapes. If, as Goldstein has said, there’s another Michael Seeley novel on tap, he’ll find his newfound readership ready and waiting. (Doubleday, $24.95)

Babylon and Other Stories

Alix Ohlin

Alix Ohlin burst on the scene just over a year ago with The Missing Person, a novel about family relationships, the art world and eco-terrorism that won critics’ plaudits. Barely fourteen months later, Ohlin is back on bookshelves with Babylon and Other Stories, a collection of 18 pieces of short fiction. As in her first novel, she enters the lives of her characters compellingly, with compassion and insight. A teenager comes to grips with her father’s estrangement from the household. An eight year old, introduced to piano lessons, finds a way to practice at home, where no piano exists. In the title story, a young man, madly in love, digs deeply to reach the truth about the object of his affection, who is living a series of lies. Two adult sisters discover that they are still the adversaries they were in childhood. And a man, grieving over the loss of his father, comes face to face with his family’s nemesis and challenges him to a set of tennis. Populating her stories with the most ordinary of people and situations, Ohlin comes to grips with human tensions and traumas that are equally and simultaneously common and uncommon. (Knopf, $23)