Howard Kazanjian

Killer baseball players ... playing a game to survive, The Death Row All Stars chronicles the amazing true story of the men on Wyoming's death row in 1911 who believed they'd be granted reprieves as long as they kept winning baseball games. This is a wild tale from the Old West about convicted murderers, burglars, rapists transformed into gentlemen playing the national pastime. It's heartbreaking that a few of the players (Joseph Seng in particular) mentioned were denied a pardon from the gallows.

For fans for baseball and true crime.… (plus d'informations)

This is an entertaining and lively 128 page true story that I bought at the Pony Express Station Museum in Gothenburg, Nebraska seven years ago but am only reading now during the Coronavirus shutdown. Both authors work in Hollywood which may explain why the present day action in the story is frequently interspersed with expositional flashbacks. Use of this technique made the reading smooth and enjoyable. I found three typographical errors including "peak" for "peek" (p.92) and "sighted" for "cited" (p.116).… (plus d'informations)

This was a ton of information that I just didn't know. I've loved Annie Oakley since I first saw the Musical as a kid. And from that point on I did know stuff like the fact that in real life Frank didn't win against Annie, but married her aside from who won and who lost. But, there was cool new stuff in here like the fact that they met and married before they started traveling with Cody.

I hadn't known she was an actress either, that was really cool info to find out, and the book had a lot of that in there. All her life after Cody's show was super interesting. She seemed very committed to teaching women (and men to a lesser degree) how to properly shoot and seemed totally obsessed with making every one in the country a trap shooter.

I also hadn't known about how she went up against Hearst and his burgeoning empire in a ton of libel lawsuits and that changed the US too.

I wonder if not for Joel Sayre and John Twist (first movie with Barbara Stanwyk) about Annie and then Rodgers and Hammerstein then would we all know more about this great lady. The former writers took away the fact that Annie won and Frank married her, and then Rodgers and Hammerstein totally destroyed their characters. And this book did a good job revealing the real (and awesome) Annie Oakley.

Also, one of my favorite parts of the book was the pictures. They were totally awesome.

I was given this ARC by Netgalley on behalf of TwoDot.… (plus d'informations)