(Roughly) Daily

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
– Groucho Marx

source

Your correspondent is departing for points South– for the dune-banked, hammock-hung, deep-fried seat of his youth.  Consequently, (R)D will be more Roughly than Daily until the 16th or 17th of August.

In order to keep readers amused until regular service resumes, Five Books:

Every day an eminent writer, thinker, commentator, politician, academic chooses five books on their specialist subject. From Einstein to Keynes, Iraq to the Andes, Communism to Empire…

For example, Peter Paret (of Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study) on “War and Intellect” (chosen as an example, your correspondent confesses, in part because it opens with your correspondent’s own most-recommended book:  Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis)…  or Pillip Vannini on “The Ethnography of Music“… or Carlos Eire’s “Time and Eternity” picks– which range from St. Augustine to Kurt Vonnegut…   Or any of many, many more.

Read ’em and reap!

As we curate our own short shelves, we might recall that it was on this date in 1890 that Cy Young pitched his first professional baseball game, leading the Cleveland Spiders past the Chicago Colts. Over the course of his 22-year career, Young won at least 508 games (511 is the generally accepted number) and averaged more than 23 victories per season.

Denton True Young earned his nickname when a bystander watched him, as a boy, devastate a wooden fence with pitches, observing that the fence “looked like it had been hit with a cyclone.”

Young was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937, in the first class inducted. The Cy Young Award, bestowed annually on the best pitcher in each professional league, was instituted in 1956.

Young’s 1911 baseball card (source: Library of Congress)