NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Jane Leavy, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax, comes the definitive biography of Babe Ruth—the man Roger Angell dubbed "the model for modern celebrity." A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe | Publishers Weekly | Kirkus | Newsweek | The Philadelphia Inquirer | The Progressive Winner of the 2019 SABR Seymour Medal | Finalist for the PEN/ESPN Literary Sports Writing Award | Longlisted for Spitball Magazine’s Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year | Finalist for the NBCC Award for Biography “Leavy’s newest masterpiece…. A major work of American history by an author with a flair for mesmerizing story-telling.” —Forbes He lived in the present tense—in the camera’s lens. There was no frame he couldn’t or wouldn’t fill. He swung the heaviest bat, earned the most money, and incurred the biggest fines. Like all the new-fangled gadgets then flooding the marketplace—radios, automatic clothes washers, Brownie cameras, microphones and loudspeakers—Babe Ruth "made impossible events happen." Aided by his crucial partnership with Christy Walsh—business manager, spin doctor, damage control wizard, and surrogate father, all stuffed into one tightly buttoned double-breasted suit—Ruth drafted the blueprint for modern athletic stardom. His was a life of journeys and itineraries—from uncouth to couth, spartan to spendthrift, abandoned to abandon; from Baltimore to Boston to New York, and back to Boston at the end of his career for a finale with the only team that would have him. There were road trips and hunting trips; grand tours of foreign capitals and post-season promotional tours, not to mention those 714 trips around the bases. After hitting his 60th home run in September 1927—a total that would not be exceeded until 1961, when Roger Maris did it with the aid of the extended modern season—he embarked on the mother of all barnstorming tours, a three-week victory lap across America, accompanied by Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig. Walsh called the tour a "Symphony of Swat." The Omaha World Herald called it "the biggest show since Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, and seven other associated circuses offered their entire performance under one tent." In The Big Fella, acclaimed biographer Jane Leavy recreates that 21-day circus and in so doing captures the romp and the pathos that defined Ruth’s life and times. Drawing from more than 250 interviews, a trove of previously untapped documents, and Ruth family records, Leavy breaks through the mythology that has obscured the legend and delivers the man.

When MI6 recognizes his potential, Alex Rider is armed with gadgets and sent on a secret mission. But little does the teen spy know that this is just the beginning of his adventures. -- Amazon.com

"Witness one man's efforts to continue a heroic legacy. Ted Kord, scientist and CEO of Kord Inc., is also known as the Blue Beetle. After making a promise to his dying mentor Dan Garret, the magically powered first Blue Beetle, he starts his own crimefighting adventures in Chicago. But without the mystical scarab that powered Dan, Ted must now rely on his own brains and brawn to survive! As a founding member of the beloved Justice League International he'll need all his gadgets, like his blinding light gun and his beetle-shaped aircraft, the Bug, to fight criminals including the time thief Chronos, the mysterious corporate saboteur Overthrow and the robotic powerhouse Carapax the indestructible man! Along the way the Bouncing Blue Bomber will also team up with guest stars including fellow vigilante the Question and those terrific Teen Titans! But his greatest challenge may just be to survive a battle royal with Dan Garret for the mantle of Blue Beetle. Only one is destined to survive! This action-packed collection includes the entire 24-issue run of Blue Beetle and Secret Origins #2.

Does your real age match the age you feel? When do we reach middle age? When, if ever, are we old? The way we age and the way we perceive age has changed radically. As we embrace new experiences, relationships and gadgets, we barely stop to look at our watches let alone consider whether our behaviour is 'age appropriate'. In this provocative and timely book, Catherine Mayer looks at the forces that created amortality - the term she coined to describe the phenomenon of living agelessly. As she follows this social epidemic through generations and across continents, she reveals its profound impact on society, our careers, our families and ourselves. Why be defined by numbers? Are you amortal?

Set in the San Francisco environs of the 1930s, this series of five short stories covers the intrigues of brilliant, stylish, and very polite amateur sleuths Claire Delacroix and her millionaire boss, Akhenaton Beelzebub Chase. They are a perfect pair to solve impossible crimes set forth by police captain Cleland Baxter, who once served with Chase in the Great War. Mystery abounds, beginning with the intriguing puzzle of a Hungarian actor found dead in his locked dressing room with vampire-like puncture wounds in his neck. A deep water explorer disappears from his diving suit, as does a fighter plane[alpha]s passenger after traveling through a cloud. Both Chase and Delacroix have a penchant for re-enacting the scene of the crime, their many talents in evidence as they do. Delacroix is a medical doctor, pilot, and multi-instrument musician with a weakness for movie magazines and a San Francisco Call reporter (who gets his own bonus story set in 1923), while her partner Chase is a professor, inventor, and autodidact polymath whose parents went down with both the Titanic and the Lusitania, with his wartime gassed lungs as a weakness. The crimes solved range from a very deadly massacre of even the house servants, to a missing person caught in the act of attending a bar mitzvah. Through it all there are colorful gadgets and gizmos galore, food both delicious and deadly, and a setting that sparkles as brightly as the characters of the well-matched sleuths. Great fun!

It was a different world my brother and I grew up in than it is now. We didn't have any electronic gadgets, no cell phones, no television or game consoles. Yet, we managed to keep keep ourselves busy and have fun. It was a much harder life, but we didn't know that then: no air-conditioning, or any of the conveniences we have now. I thought it would be fun, and hopefully enlightening for my kids and grandkids, and anyone else who is interested, to get a glimpse of how my brother and I grew up and some of the things we did—antics we pulled, and some of the trouble or adventures we experienced growing up in the years after World War II and into the 1950's.

GIRL IN A BIG BRASS BED Lobbe wants his painting back. Goering confiscated it when the Nazis raided Rotterdam. But now, years later, it has been located, and the German government wants to return it. So Lobbe sends his assistant Manny deWitt to Munich to fetch it. The painting is Vermeer's "Apple Girl," Lobbe's prized possession. The mission seems easy enough. But as deWitt soon discovers, those who have the misfortune to come in contact with the elusive Vermeer seem to experience an early and unpleasant death. The sooner he gets the painting and gets out, the better. If only it were that simple. THE SPY WHO WAS 3 FEET TALL This time Lobbe sends Manny to a recently emerged African nation called Motana. It's deWitt's job to negotiate the contract to build a road through the country. As usual, Lobbe doesn't muddy the waters with too much information for deWitt. But this time, everyone seems to be up on the project but him. Yum Lee, the Chinese emissary who also wants the contract, is one step ahead of him. Inge, Lobbe's delightful niece, is strictly undercover. And then there's his ubiquitous taxi driver, Baby, who is much more (or less) than what he seems. Just what the hell is so important about this road anyway? CODE NAME GADGET As gadgets go, it was supposedly a fairly large one, large enough to fill a medium-sized factory. Manny's mission is to buy it for his boss Lobbe before the competition beats him to it. The mission takes him to England under the eccentric guidance of a pilot named Max Garten, and into the unexpected arms of Meghan Bushmill. Together, the three of them form a kind of team as they try to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys--and if it even makes any difference anymore. Because whoever has the gadget can destroy the world, and even Lobbe may not be able to buy his way out of that one.

The hit television show Alias has developed a devoted, cult-like following of viewers with an appetite for adrenaline-fueled plots. This entertaining collection of essays offers new and clever observations on Alias 's spies, gadgets, plot twists, and character motivations. From the multicolored wigs of Sidney Bristow to the undercover office romances and family angst, this tongue-in-cheek study offers interesting new theories and insightful pop culture impressions of one of television's most beloved new series.