David Vincent

The home run has changed the game of baseball, moving it into a sport where might makes right and fans clamor for the clout. Home Run's Most Wanted™: The Top 10 Book of Monumental Dingers, Prodigious Swingers, and Everything Long-Ball celebrates all there is about the home run, from the folks that hit it, the guys that serve it up, and even the voices proclaiming, ? It's outta here!" David Vincent, called ? The Sultan of Swat Stats" by ESPN, brings it all to you in this fact-filled smorgasbord of home run knowledge. His detailed and varied top-ten lists include top home run totals position by position; players with the most homers against the Yankees; the youngest and oldest to ?go yard"; pitchers who surrendered the most homers; the states that have birthed the most top hitters; home run hitters with the longest last names; and even the top totals for players with the common last name of Williams. There's so much more, too. With a database of every single round-tripper ever hit, Vincent can present just about anything home run related you can imagine, and does so in this book. From the interesting and surprising to the humorous and just plain offbeat, Home Run's Most Wanted™ fills the bases with fun trivia about the longest ball of them all.

The home run is indeed baseball's ultimate weapon. It can change a game in a heartbeat, making a tight game into a blowout or a seemingly easy win into a nail-biter. Homers are majestic, powerful, and awe inspiring. And sluggers are the sport's biggest stars, from the days of Babe Ruth through Barry Bonds. David Vincent, called "The Sultan of Swat Stats" by ESPN, delves into the long history of the home run with great detail and color. He starts when the rules of the game were highly unstable and sometimes the definition of a home run could change in a park from year to year; follows through the "Deadball Era," when the home run was rare; explores the explosion Babe Ruth brought to baseball in the 1920s; discusses how both world wars affected homer statistics; looks at great home run races such as Maris versus Mantle in 1961; assesses the effects of the juiced ball, juiced players, thin air, and smaller ballparks; and so much more. If there is something to know about home run history, look to David Vincent for the answer-Major League Baseball does. With Home Run: The Definitive History of Baseball's Ultimate Weapon, now you can know it too. A 1990s Nike commercial proclaimed that "chicks dig the long ball." In this thorough and colorful look at baseball's ultimate weapon, David Vincent shows you why.

The home run is indeed baseball's ultimate weapon. It can change a game in a heartbeat, making a tight game into a blowout or a seemingly easy win into a nail-biter. Homers are majestic, powerful, and awe inspiring. And sluggers are the sport's biggest stars, from the days of Babe Ruth through Barry Bonds. David Vincent, called "The Sultan of Swat Stats" by ESPN, delves into the long history of the home run with great detail and color. He starts when the rules of the game were highly unstable and sometimes the definition of a home run could change in a park from year to year; follows through the "Deadball Era," when the home run was rare; explores the explosion Babe Ruth brought to baseball in the 1920s; discusses how both world wars affected homer statistics; looks at great home run races such as Maris versus Mantle in 1961; assesses the effects of the juiced ball, juiced players, thin air, and smaller ballparks; and so much more. If there is something to know about home run history, look to David Vincent for the answer-Major League Baseball does. With Home Run: The Definitive History of Baseball's Ultimate Weapon, now you can know it too. A 1990s Nike commercial proclaimed that "chicks dig the long ball." In this thorough and colorful look at baseball's ultimate weapon, David Vincent shows you why.

This important book provides a comparative study of the growth and impact of mass literacy across Europe between 1750 and 1950. The volume outlines the main features of the comparative growth of literacy, and relates them to the later growth of electronic media. It assesses the ways in which mass literacy has transformed ways of living and thinking, by exploring broader social and cultural issues such as gender, age, consciousness of time and space, and our relationship with the natural world. Vincent begins by considering the evolution of methods of teaching and learning across the centuries, and examines the relationship between literacy and economic growth, including the changing function of literacy in the workplace. He discusses the changing pattern of demand for and provision of reading matter, as well as the changing relationship between oral and written modes of generating and reproducing both information and fantasy. In later chapters, Vincent analyses the history of popular writing, and the relationship between print, language and national identity. The impact of literacy on democracy and political mobilization, and on the making of censorship and propaganda, is also discussed in this lively and accessible study.

This important book provides a comparative study of the growth and impact of mass literacy across Europe between 1750 and 1950. The volume outlines the main features of the comparative growth of literacy, and relates them to the later growth of electronic media. It assesses the ways in which mass literacy has transformed ways of living and thinking, by exploring broader social and cultural issues such as gender, age, consciousness of time and space, and our relationship with the natural world. Vincent begins by considering the evolution of methods of teaching and learning across the centuries, and examines the relationship between literacy and economic growth, including the changing function of literacy in the workplace. He discusses the changing pattern of demand for and provision of reading matter, as well as the changing relationship between oral and written modes of generating and reproducing both information and fantasy. In later chapters, Vincent analyses the history of popular writing, and the relationship between print, language and national identity. The impact of literacy on democracy and political mobilization, and on the making of censorship and propaganda, is also discussed in this lively and accessible study.

The Culture of Secrecy is the first comprehensive study of the restriction of official information in modern British history. It seeks to understand why secrets have been kept, and how systems of control have been constructed - and challenged - over the past hundred and sixty years. The author transcends the conventional boundaries of political or social history in his wide-ranging diagnosis of the `British disease' - the legal forms and habits of mind which together have constituted the national tradition of discreet reserve. The chapters range across bureaucrats and ballots, gossip and gay rights, doctors and dole investigators in their exploration of the ethical basis of power in the public, professional, commercial and domestic spheres. Professor Vincent examines concepts such as privacy and confidentiality, honour and integrity, openness and freedom of expression, which have served as benchmarks in the development of the liberal state and society.

This survey of crime in ENgland from the medieval period to the present day synthesizes case-study and local-level material and standardizes the debates and issues for the student reader.

In l750, half the population were unable to sign their names; by l9l4 England, together with a handful of advanced Western countries, had for the first time in history achieved a nominally literate society. This book seeks to understand how and why literacy spread into every corner of English society, and what impact it had on the lives and minds of the common people.