John Nogowski

In Diamond Duels: Baseball’s Greatest Matchups, we take a magnifying glass to some of the game’s most entertaining and historic battles between hitters and pitchers, played out over breezy spring evenings, hot summer afternoons, and chilly fall evenings as the long, rumbling baseball season finally winds down. Then we look closer.Did you know that over their 20-plus year careers, Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Warren Spahn matched up against each other a staggering 356 times and that Musial blasted 15 of his 475 career home runs off the Braves’ lefty? You can bet Spahn knew that, probably kept count. Probably also had unprintable thoughts about each and every one.As a sport with such a rich and diverse history, baseball offers us a long and fascinating recounting of so many of those dramatic matchups – if you know where to look. There are many untold stories inside the box scores; Duke Snider slamming 19 home runs off Robin Roberts, who must have groaned every time he saw No. 4 at the plate; a starry-eyed National League star Dizzy Dean finally getting to pitch to American League folk hero Babe Ruth, winding down his career with the Boston Braves; Yankees manager Casey Stengel deciding not to start left-handed ace Whitey Ford in some key moments throughout Ford’s Hall of Fame career; Albert Pujols doing his best to upset those careful pregame pitching strategy sessions by going out and swatting a record 154 of his 703 career blasts in his very first at-bat of the game.Diamond Duels is a book for the old and the young baseball fan, those who want to know just a little bit more about those dramatic matchups between pitcher and hitter throughout the games of our lives as well as those who want to look back, find out something they hadn’t thought of, enriching their everlasting baseball memories.

When Columbia Records finally decided to open up the voluminous Bob Dylan vaults, unleashing thousands of hours of long-sought-after, oft-rumored, unreleased material, it was hard to keep up. Included in the release were six CDs of Blood On The Tracks outtakes, six CDs of the complete Basement Tapes, 10 CDs of Rolling Thunder Revue live material, the six extraordinary CDs of The Cutting Edge from Dylan's game-changing 1965-66 sessions, and a stunning 36 CD release of Dylan's stormy 1966 world tour that some say changed the face of popular music. It is all explored here. This updated examination of Dylan's five-decade career provides a comprehensively analyzes his writing and recording history and the historical impact of Dylan's prolific creative output. It features critical commentary on every song and album, including many rare bootleg recordings and the recent new discoveries from Columbia Records. Later chapters also list and discuss Dylan's numerous appearances in film, in literature, on radio, and on television. Including his Nobel Prize speech and lecture, an extensive bibliography of books on Dylan old and new, and a brand-new introduction with updated Billboard charts, this is the ultimate book on Bob.

Nearly all of the Gadsden County's student body is black and considered economically disadvantaged, the highest percentage of any school district in Florida. Fewer than 15 percent perform at grade level. An idealistic new teacher at East Gadsden High, John Nogowski saw that the Department of Education's techniques would not work in this environment. He wanted to make an impact in his students' lives. In a room stacked with battered classics like A Raisin in the Sun and To Kill a Mockingbird, he found 30 pristine, "quarantined" copies of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Abused by an alcoholic father, neglected by his own community, consigned to a life of privation and danger. Wouldn't Huck strike a chord with these kids? Were he alive today, wouldn't he be one of them? Part lesson plan, part memoir, Nogowski's surprising narrative details his experience teaching Twain's politically charged satire of American racism and hypocrisy to poor black teens.