Baseball's First Indian, Louis Sockalexis: Penobscot Legend, Cleveland Indian
by Ed Rice

Baseball’s First Indian, Louis Sockalexis: Penobscot Legend, Cleveland Indian (Tide-mark), by Ed Rice, is a captivating study of the career of Louis Sockalexis, the first American Indian to play professional baseball. Devotees of baseball history will cherish this story, which chronicles in play-by-play reporting, Sockalexis’ rise from Maine’s Penobscot Indian reservation to his short, but impressive career, playing for the Cleveland Spiders. Sockalexis’ prowess on the baseball diamond inspired the Cleveland Indians’ moniker. Rice also describes Sockalexis’ fall to the minor leagues and his final return home to the Penobscot reservation where he coached and umpired baseball.

In addition to teaching journalism and communication studies, Rice writes theater criticism and arts commentary for a number of newspapers in Maine—and for Maine Public Broadcasting System’s “Maine Things Considered.” In February 2000, he wrote the biographical profile of Sockalexis that appears each year in the Cleveland Indians Media Guide. He also spearheaded the nomination drive that led to the induction of both Louis and Andrew Sockalexis into the national American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in Lawrence, Kan., in April 2000.

Man Out of Time
by Michael Hogan ’72

Publisher’s Weekly describes Man Out of Time (Delta) by Michael Hogan ’72 as “relentless… A tale of wayward youth in the vein of Bright Lights, Big City… Hogan has a gift for capturing the vulnerability of youth and the terrifying swiftness with which things can go utterly wrong.” It is the story of a young, working-class Irish Catholic lawyer, who drinks too much and finds himself falling from his position in a big Manhattan firm. A Booklist review states: “At times witty and irreverent, and at times darkly comedic and sad, Hogan’s offering makes you hope he has more stories to tell.”

Graduating from law school in the 1970s, Hogan worked for and was fired from several prestigious law firms; he then taught in Kingston, Jamaica, before being let go for excessive drinking. Homeless for a time in Boston, he entered recovery in 1985 and, in 1991, wrote Man Out of Time. Hogan now lives in Ohio.

The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers
by Howard Clarke ’50

The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers (Indiana University Press), by Howard Clarke ’50, is a different kind of biblical commentary. Clarke writes about Matthew’s Gospel as it is read and understood by modern, mainstream scholars; he then presents a variety of ways the text has been understood over the course of two thousand years. Indiana Press writes, “By referring forward to Matthew’s readers (rather than back to the text’s composers), the book exploits the tensions between what contemporary scholars understand to be the intent of the author of Matthew and the quite different, indeed often eccentric and bizarre ways this text has been understood, assimilated, and applied over the years.”

Clarke is professor emeritus of classics at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of studies of Homer and Vergil, including The Art of the Odyssey and Homer’s Readers.

Promoting Your Talent: A Guidebook for Women and Their Firms
by Nancy Baldiga

Nancy Baldiga, C.P.A., wrote Promoting Your Talent: A Guidebook for Women and Their Firms (AICPA), which is being hailed as the perfect guidebook for every firm and every female certified public accountant seeking to enhance her career in accounting. Baldiga interviewed more than 50 successful women, human resource directors and managing partners about the obstacles faced by women and the practices that both women and firms can adopt to facilitate advancement in the accounting profession.

A member of the College faculty since 1991, Baldiga teaches introductory and intermediate accounting, auditing and accounting information systems. Previously, she had worked as an audit manager at Price Waterhouse. Baldiga holds a master of science degree in taxation from Bentley College.