The Common Good Book Club discusses "The Devil's Snake Curve" with Special Guest Josh Ostergaard

Take yourself from the ballgame to Wal-Mart and back with Josh Ostergaard’s “radically subjective American history.” We will be joined by author Josh Ostergaard to talk and answer questions about the book.

“I thought I wasn't interested in baseball until I read this book. It's like a box of eclectic baseball cards about our country and our culture - curious, compelling, and disturbing in turn.”--Eula Biss, author of Notes From No Man’s Land and On Immunity

“In [Ostergaard’s] chopped-up history of the last 150 years, the baseball diamond becomes the stage for an allegorical retelling of American hegemony, with the Yankees standing in for a nation loved and hated for its might.”–Jeff Turrentine, The New York Times

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The Devil's Snake Curve offers an alternative American history, in which colonialism, jingoism, capitalism, and faith are represented by baseball. Personal and political, it twines Japanese internment camps with the Yankees; Walmart with the Kansas City Royals; and facial hair patterns with militarism, Guantanamo, and the modern security state. An essay, a miscellany, and a passionate unsettling of Josh Ostergaard's relationship with our national pastime, it allows for both the clover of a childhood outfield and the persistence of the game's service to those in power. America and baseball are both hard to love or leave in this by turns coruscating and heartfelt debut.

You bring the opinions, we’ll supply the wine and cheese. RSVP to Colin[at]commongoodbooks.com