"Entertaining and illuminating . . . Mahler marshals his evidence well . . . By using the Yankees as a central metaphor for the city's fortunes, Mahler is able to draw a nuanced portrait of this wild year."—Jon Meacham, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

"In The Sweet Science—in all his books—Liebling himself, the voice and the character, is immensely appealing."—David Remnick, The New Yorker

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

"Mr. Greenberg brings his gymnastic verbal skills to bear on the subject of the all-American pastime . . . An enchanting and enchanted take on baseball . . . [It is] the story of Darren Lemming, a god among baseball players and the star of a team called the Empires, who sets off a complicated chain of ultimately tragic events when he publicly announces that he is gay. This allows Mr. Greenberg to consider . . . big, big subjects like sexual and racial prejudice, moral responsibility, public versus personal identities and the inability of people to ever truly know one another."—Ben Brantley, The New York Times