Ty Cobb - A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen

I read this to learn more about the first of the modern era superstars (Cap Anson had been the deadball era superstar). In my brain Cobb would be followed by Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Mays, Aaron, McGwire, and Bonds as the icons of their age.

But I soon found that there was a second story that was just as fascinating.  If Cobb was not quite the monster that was in the movie and if he was not the man who was featured in the previous biography, how did we swallow this myth?  Why did we believe it?

The book does tell about Cobb's life, especially his baseball career, but it also lets us in on a secret that has been kept for decades - Al Stump, the previous biographer was a liar.

He lied in many ways throughout his life and as Leershsen tries to fact check the Stump story he finds that one lie leads to another and then another.  Stump saw gold in the lies he told and he also got fame.  His follow up article in True Magazine got him his biggest pay day and added layers of lies to what he had already written.

The difficult and well handled truth of this biography is that Ty Cobb was not particularly lovable.  He was complex and he did have a hair trigger temper, but he was not the racist, killer, spike sharpening ghoul that many of us had been taught.

His popularity was up and down with the fans and the other players like Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, but his play on the field was always intense and it was a style that no one else has had, except maybe Rickey Henderson.  It was a psychological style of intimidation on the bases.  Henderson had this too and unnerved many pitcher and player, but he could not get on base like Cobb, a .366 lifetime average.

Cobb played against Ruth and lived to see the long ball take over.  It was hard for him to accept the change, but that is true of many of us "old-timers".

Through the biography you will meet many of the stars and characters of the early stage of modern baseball and it is a fascinating and well written journey.

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

David McCullough just demonstrated how little I knew about these two important brothers and their unknown sister.  Almost everyone remembers that they made bikes and flew the first flight at a place called Kittyhawk.  And that is all most of us know.

But there was much more to their story than waking up and telling each other, lets build a flying machine.   They did research, they connected with the leading men in the small aviation world, and they did prototypes and gliders.

They not only built a plane, they also learned how to fly.  They used gliders to hone their skill and they build small scale wind tunnels to test ideas.  These men were engineers and scientists as well as the first pilots.

Then the big moment happens and the first reaction in the US was a yawn, but this did not discourage them.  They believed in what they were doing and even though they had to travel to France to get the encouragement they needed and some financial reward, they knew that eventually the US would discover and act on their work.

Their persistence with their own time and their own money to build this plane was amazing and well documented in a McCullough classic.  No write today does research better than this author and the writing is so clear and factual that you finish the book feeling like you know the subject.

Well organized and thorough, flight is the fourth character in this book, its early history and people like Langely who headed the Smithsonian and had lots of money and resources, but was secretive and did not share with the brothers and Octave Chanute, born in Paris, an American Civil Engineer, who did encourage and share his knowledge are part of the flight story.

Wilbur and Orville Wright almost come out as one character.  They were so close and stayed that way, unmarried except to their project, we start to see the subtle differences in the two dedicated men.

And ultimately the cast of characters will have the man they hired to run the shop and do their mechanical engineering as well as the sister who takes a prominent role after the flight.

The final important character is their father, the bishop, who is in the background of the story, yet is the key to the inspiration through a toy he gave the boys when they were young.

Great read and