Baseball's Best Books

Some fiction, some non, but all favorite books about America's favorite past time.
Updated September 19, 2022
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Shoeless Joe
W. P. Kinsella
Paper Book
The inspiration for the beloved film Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella is the story about the beauty and history of baseball, and the power and endurance of a dream. "A moonlit novel about baseball, dreams, family, the land, and literature."--Sports Illustrated "If you...
The great American novel
Roth, Philip
Paper Book
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral--a richly imagined novel featuring America's only homeless big-league baseball team in history delivers "shameless comic extravagance.... Roth gleefully exploits our readiness to let baseball stand for America itself" (The New...
The Brothers K
David James Duncan
Ebook
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK   Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer....
Bang the drum slowly
Harris, Mark
Paper Book
Henry Wiggen, hero of The Southpaw and the best-known fictional baseball player in America, is back again, throwing a baseball “with his arm and his brain and his memory and his bluff for the sake of his pocket and his family.” More than a novel about baseball, Bang the...
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Michael Lewis
Paper Book
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball book ever"...
The art of fielding : a novel
Harbach, Chad.
Paper Book
A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this widely acclaimed tale about love, life, and baseball, praised by the New York Times as "wonderful...a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting." 
The Only Way Is the Steady Way: Essays on Baseball, Ichiro, and How We Watch the Game
Andrew Forbes
Paper Book
Essays about baseball's past, present, and future--and the wisdom of Ichiro Suzuki The Only Way Is the Steady Way is a baseball memoir in scorecards and baseball cards, a recollection of the game's biggest stars and outlandish personalities, and introspective letters to a...
The last hero : a life of Henry Aaron
Bryant, Howard
Paper Book
In the thirty-four years since his retirement, Henry Aaron's reputation has only grown in magnitude: he broke existing records (rbis, total bases, extra-base hits) and set new ones (hitting at least thirty home runs per season fifteen times, becoming the first player in history to hammer five...

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