Books with author John Farris

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The definitive account of one of the most accomplished, controversial, and polarizing figures in American history Bill Clinton is the most arresting leader of his generation. He transformed American politics, and his eight years as president spawned arguments that continue to resonate. For all that has been written about this singular personality–including Clinton’s own massive autobiography–there has been no comprehensive, nonpartisan overview of the Clinton presidency. Few writers are as qualified and equipped to tackle this vast subject as the award-winning veteran Washington Post correspondent John F. Harris, who covered Clinton for six of his eight years in office–as long as any reporter for a major newspaper. In The Survivor, Harris frames the historical debate about President William Jefferson Clinton, by revealing the inner workings of the Clinton White House and providing the first objective analysis of Clinton’s leadership and its consequences. Harris shows Clinton entering the Oval Office in 1993 primed to make history. But with the Cold War recently concluded and the country coming off a nearly uninterrupted generation of Republican presidents, the new president’s entry into this maelstrom of events was tumultuous. His troubles were exacerbated by the habits, personal contacts, and the management style, he had developed in his years as governor of Arkansas. Clinton’s enthusiasm and temper were legendary, and he and Hillary Rodham Clinton–whose ambitions and ordeals also fill these pages–arrived filled with mistrust about many of the characters who greeted them in the “permanent Washington” that often holds the reins in the nation’s capital. Showing surprising doggedness and a deep-set desire to govern from the middle, Clinton repeatedly rose to the challenges; eventually winning over (or running over) political adversaries on both sides of the aisle–sometimes facing as much skepticism from fellow Democrats as from his Republican foes. But as Harris shows in his accounts of political debacles such as the attempted overhaul of health care, Clinton’s frustrations in the war against terrorism, and the numerous personal controversies that time and again threatened to consume his presidency, Bill Clinton could never manage to outrun his tendency to favor conciliation over clarity, or his own destructive appetites. The Survivor is the best kind of history, a book filled with major revelations–the tense dynamic of the Clinton inner circle and Clinton’s professional symbiosis with Al Gore to the imprint of Clinton’s immense personality on domestic and foreign affairs–as well as the minor details that leaven all great political narratives. This long-awaited synthesis of the dominant themes, events, and personalities of the Clinton years will stand as the authoritative and lasting work on the Clinton Presidency.

The definitive account of one of the most accomplished, controversial, and polarizing figures in American historyBill Clinton is the most arresting leader of his generation. He transformed American politics, and his eight years as president spawned arguments that continue to resonate. For all that has been written about this singular personality–including Clinton’s own massive autobiography–there has been no comprehensive, nonpartisan overview of the Clinton presidency. Few writers are as qualified and equipped to tackle this vast subject as the award-winning veteran Washington Post correspondent John F. Harris, who covered Clinton for six of his eight years in office–as long as any reporter for a major newspaper. In The Survivor, Harris frames the historical debate about President William Jefferson Clinton, by revealing the inner workings of the Clinton White House and providing the first objective analysis of Clinton’s leadership and its consequences.Harris shows Clinton entering the Oval Office in 1993 primed to make history. But with the Cold War recently concluded and the country coming off a nearly uninterrupted generation of Republican presidents, the new president’s entry into this maelstrom of events was tumultuous. His troubles were exacerbated by the habits, personal contacts, and the management style, he had developed in his years as governor of Arkansas. Clinton’s enthusiasm and temper were legendary, and he and Hillary Rodham Clinton–whose ambitions and ordeals also fill these pages–arrived filled with mistrust about many of the characters who greeted them in the “permanent Washington” that often holds the reins in the nation’s capital.Showing surprising doggedness and a deep-set desire to govern from the middle, Clinton repeatedly rose to the challenges; eventually winning over (or running over) political adversaries on both sides of the aisle–sometimes facing as much skepticism from fellow Democrats as from his Republican foes. But as Harris shows in his accounts of political debacles such as the attempted overhaul of health care, Clinton’s frustrations in the war against terrorism, and the numerous personal controversies that time and again threatened to consume his presidency, Bill Clinton could never manage to outrun his tendency to favor conciliation over clarity, or his own destructive appetites. The Survivor is the best kind of history, a book filled with major revelations–the tense dynamic of the Clinton inner circle and Clinton’s professional symbiosis with Al Gore to the imprint of Clinton’s immense personality on domestic and foreign affairs–as well as the minor details that leaven all great political narratives. This long-awaited synthesis of the dominant themes, events, and personalities of the Clinton years will stand as the authoritative and lasting work on the Clinton Presidency.

Getting inside is easy; the stress comes in getting out clean. A case of breaking and entering escalates after Émile Cinq-Mars transfers from the Night Patrol. Montreal, 1975. Detective Émile Cinq-Mars is transferring from the Night Patrol – the notoriously tough department of officers in charge of watching over the city as it sleeps – to the day shift. His old superior has seen to it that he’s assigned to partner Yves Giroux, another ex-Night Patrol detective some say isn’t on the ‘up and up’. Getting in a house is easy for thief Quinn Tanner. The stress comes in getting out clean. On finding her getaway driver dead after her latest heist, she goes underground. For his first case on the day shift, Émile is sent to the property that Quinn has just visited, and their paths are set to cross. But has she stolen something more valuable than she realizes . . . and who is hunting for her now?

Montreal, 1975. Detective Émile Cinq-Mars is transferring from the Night Patrol – the notoriously tough department of officers in charge of watching over the city as it sleeps – to the day shift. His old superior has seen to it that he’s assigned to partner Yves Giroux, another ex-Night Patrol detective some say isn’t on the ‘up and up’.Getting in a house is easy for thief Quinn Tanner. The stress comes in getting out clean. On finding her getaway driver dead after her latest heist, she goes underground. For his first case on the day shift, Émile is sent to the property that Quinn has just visited, and their paths are set to cross. But has she stolen something more valuable than she realizes . . . and who is hunting for her now?

There is simply no other book like this one on the market. One reason may be that a market scarcely exists for the secrets that baseball’s greatest hitters (or “strikers,” or “stickers”) brought to their craft over a century ago. Like other sports, and like our culture generally, baseball coaches and gurus have invested heavily in the notion of progress. Today is better than yesterday (goes the dogma) in every way, thanks to technology, training, and medical advances. A lot of that notion is true: some of it is bunk.“Players are stronger and healthier today.” True; so why do they strike out one out of every three trips to the plate? “Because pitchers are throwing much harder.” Generally speaking, yes; but the mound is also lower, the hitting background is better, batters wear helmets and body armor, and a zero-tolerance exists for knockdown pitches. Tris Speaker fanned 13 times in 674 plate appearances during the 1920 campaign while batting .388 and leading the league (for the fifth of eight seasons) with 50 doubles. Who performs at that rate today, even in Little League?John Harris believes in the value of historical research and scientific method—and he also entertains a skepticism of our blind, arrogant faith in the present’s superiority to the past. Convinced that yesteryear’s batsmen must have done at least some things better (precisely because they amassed such dazzling numbers while being less healthy and less tutored), he has invested years in reverse-engineering the swing that preceded Babe Ruth and the “live ball.” No single type of swing existed back then, it turns out; in fact, hitting featured a vast diversity of styles compared to the modern game. Nevertheless, certain tendencies can be isolated (front-foot hitting, shifting in the box, choking and hand-spreading, etc.). To judge by casual explanations offered of (for instance) the Georgia Peach's three-inch hand spread, today’s color commentators and technical analysts haven’t a clue about what was going on with Ty Cobb or Honus Wagner. As for baseball historians, they can tell you about Ed Delahanty’s drinking problem or Fred Clarke’s eye for the girls... but most of them have no interest whatever in how their subject gripped a bat.Dr. Harris corrects many such oversights, insofar as is humanly possibly over a century later and with little more than grainy still photos to go on. True students of the game will be shocked--and perhaps delighted--by how many potentially game-changing tips he has managed to uncover for the next generation of hitters... if any risk-takers emerge among the crop, that is.

Any devout baseball enthusiast will appreciate the creative metrics that Dr. Harris has applied to the careers of young black ballplayers whose big-league life (in the cases examined here) began a good six or eight years after Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The “study group” is mostly drawn from Post Cereal cards that Harris lovingly collected as a boy. Some of his collection’s most promising members had dropped off the map when he revisited the cards decades later, and he grew curious. Black players, especially, seemed abundant in this unhappy set of strange disappearances. The project started, therefore, in a thesis: as of about 1960, making it in the Major Leagues remained much harder for African-Americans than for Caucasians.Statistical review included not only a comparison of black and white batting averages, Earned Run Averages, and other standard metrics, but also an exploration of environmental conditions, such as how often players endured the disruption of being traded and how much time they spent in inactivity between starts. There are two sides to every story, of course, and Harris takes pains to underscore the presumptions and blind spots in his own arguments; but the tendency for black players to encounter more obstacles and fewer rewards often emerges rather powerfully.As Dr. Harris attempts to refine these findings with additional research into sportswriters’ accounts and other sources, he unveils a theory never succinctly proposed by any source: that the prejudices in question were not simply a conditioned reflex to skin color, but that the “anything goes” baseball of the Negro Leagues made coaches and managers of the Fifties’ systematized, highly controlled Major League game very suspicious and uncomfortable. Members of the Caucasian “brain trust” feared being shown up or drawn beyond the bounds of their expertise. This stylistic prejudice—which lay close to the heart of the game’s racial prejudice, Harris believes—appears nowhere more clearly than in the emphasis of the home run. Aaron, Mays, Robinson, Banks... they all rose to glory on an impressive wave of homering; but potential superstars like Pinson, Altman, Al Smith, and Floyd Robinson may have been ruinously infected by Home Run Fever.Such a conclusion, because it removes prejudice from the purely ideological corner of racism and chooses to view it as a complex puzzle—because, that is, it doesn’t confront us with a simplistic “good guy/bad guy” scenario—will disappoint many of today’s social critics who want to cast all racial questions in a “good vs. evil” mold. Dr. Harris stresses, however, that he is uninterested in being the “white scholar trying to advertise… moral enlightenment” in a grand feat of virtue-signaling. Referring to prejudices that beset his own son’s baseball experience—not racial, but nevertheless severe—he asserts instead, “I am a father who once felt the anguish of looking on helplessly as his son’s confidence was sabotaged—and who has re-aggravated that anguish in pondering the young lives of a few talented men now gone from this world.”The book thus ends up being a personal odyssey: an odd, even unique evolution for a work on sports history. But then, baseball is a unique game. It bonds fathers and sons, and it breaks down barriers that ordinarily separate our communities. If John Harris’s approach defies the expectations of sportswriting by confusing its subjects with our sons and our brothers, does it not also therein suggest the only possible solution to the problem of racial bigotry?