Richard D. Cramer has been doing baseball analytics for just about as long as anyone alive, even before the term “sabermetrics” existed. He started analyzing baseball statistics as a hobby in the mid-1960s, not long after graduating from Harvard and MIT. He was a research scientist for SmithKline and in his spare time used his work computer to test his theories about baseball statistics. One of his earliest discoveries was that clutch hitting—then one of the most sacred pieces of received ...

A masterpiece of political reportage that exposes the emotional reality of the modern American campaign systemPulitzer Prize–winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer cracks open the heart of the American political system in this classic exploration of the 1988 presidential campaign. Cramer delves into the personal, intimate lives of the key candidates, including George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Joe Biden, and Michael Dukakis, as he seeks to understand the drives, passions...

Joe DiMaggio was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good.In the hard-knuckled thirties, he was the immigrant boy who made it big—and spurred the New York Yankees to a new era of dynasty. He was Broadway Joe, the icon of elegance, the man who wooed and won Marilyn Monroe—the most beautiful girl America could dream up.Joe DiMaggio was a mirror of our best self. And he was also the loneliest hero we ever had.In this groundbreaking biography, Puli...

Was rock legend Jerry Lee Lewis' fourth wife murdered, and did her husband, a man nicknamed "the Killer" do it? A literary whodunnit by one of the greats of artful and hard-hitting narrative journalism. Including an introduction by imprint editor Alex Belth and a note from publisher Mike Sager, a Cramer acolyte.With an introduction by series editor Alex Belth and a tribute by series publisher, Mike Sager, a Cramer acolyte.About The Stacks Reader SeriesThe Stacks Read...

An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race—and scours the psyches of contenders from George Bush and Robert Dole to Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart—Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Richa...

Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed biographer of Joe DiMaggio decodes baseball icon Ted Williams and finds not just a great player, but also a great man.When legendary Red Sox hitter Ted Williams died on July 5, 2002, newspapers reviewed the stats, compared him to other legends of the game, and declared him the greatest hitter who ever lived.In 1986, Richard Ben Cramer spent months on a profile of Ted Williams, and the result was the

The most intimate portrait of George H.W. Bush ever published.George Herbert Walker Bush, the forty-first president of the United States and the patriarch of America’s most powerful political dynasty, never wrote a memoir. But bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Richard Ben Cramer took the full measure of President Bush in his thousand-page epic, What It Takes—one of the most influential and respected works of journalism and biography of...

In this “powerful polemic that deserves to be read” (The New York Review of Books), the major issues that have haunted Israel and Palestine for decades are insightfully explored and analyzed.With personal observation and sharp and challenging arguments, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Ben Cramer insists that Israel is losing her soul by maintaining her occupation of the lands conquered in the Six Day War. Israel has become a victim of that occupation...

In the hard-knuckled thirties, Joe DiMaggio was the immigrant boy who made it big. He was the dominant star in the New York Yankees dynasty. As World War II loomed, Joltin' Joe launched a fifty-six game hitting streak -- and the nation literally sang his name. In the age of postwar ease and plenty, he became Broadway Joe, the icon of elegance and class -- marrying Marilyn Monroe, the most beautiful girl in America.In 1962, when he lost that girl for good, Joe was everyman embarking ...

Industrial policy has long been regarded as a strategy to encourage sector-, industry-, or economy-wide development by the state. It has been central to competitiveness, catching up, and structural change in both advanced and developing countries. It has also been one of the most contested perspectives, reflecting ideologically inflected debates and shifts in prevailing ideas. There has lately been a renewed interest in industrial policy in academic circles and international policy dialogu...

Land abandonment is increasing as human influence on the globe intensifies and various ecological, social, and economic factors conspire to force the cessation of agriculture and other forms of land management. The “old fields” that result from abandonment have been the subject of much study, yet few attempts have been made to examine the larger questions raised by old field dynamics.Old Fields brings together leading experts from around the world to synthesize past and current wor...

This volume presents a set of essays that discuss the development and plasticity of the vertebrate auditory system. The topic is one that has been considered before in the Springer Handbook of Auditory Research (volume 9 in 1998, and volume 23 in 2004) but the field has grown substantially and it is appropriate to bring previous material up to date to reflect the wealth of new data and to raise some entirely new topics. At the same time, this volume is also unique in that it is the outgrow...