WORKS

BOOKS:

The Called Shot:  Babe Ruth, the Chicago Cubs, and the Unforgettable Major League Baseball Season of 1932  (University of Nebraska Press 2020) 

Starred review in Publishers Weekly (2020). Named “Best Baseball Book of 2020” by Sports Collectors Digest.  Finalist for the Seymour Medal (2021). 

Midnight Assassin:  A Murder in America’s Heartland 

A nonfiction book co-authored with Patricia L. Bryan.  (Algonquin Books 2005; University of Iowa Press 2007).  Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly (2005).  Awarded Certificate of Recognition “for significantly contributing to Iowa History” by The State Historical Society of Iowa in 2006. 

The Plea:  The True Story of Young Wesley Elkins and His Struggle for Redemption

A non-fiction book co-authored with Patricia L. Bryan. (University of Iowa Press 2022).

BASEBALL ESSAYS:

“Jack Kerouac and Fantasy Baseball” — in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2019-2021.

“The Golden Era of Prison Baseball and the Revenge of Casey Coburn”—in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2017-2018.

“On the Brink:  Babe Ruth in Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day”—co-authored with Patricia L. Bryan in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2009-2010. 

“Homecoming:  A Sense of Place and Community in Thomas Oliphant’s Praying for Gil Hodges and Sara Vogan’s In Shelly’s Leg”—in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2007-2008.“

“The Warden Takes a Murderer to the World Series:  A Tale of Depression-era Compassion”— in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2005-2006.

FICTION:

“Boundaries” (2012) in the North Carolina Literary Review.  Winner of the 2011 Doris Betts Fiction Prize.  Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and awarded Special Recognition in Pushcart Prize XXXVIII 2014.

“Distance” (2008) in the North Carolina Literary Review.  Winner of the 2007 Doris Betts Fiction Prize.