Poetry Night at the Ballpark and Other Scenes from an Alternative America: Writings 1986-2014

Bill Kauffman has carved out an idiosyncratic identity quite unlike any other American writer. Praised by the likes of Gore Vidal Benjamin Schwarz and George McGovern he has with a distinctive and slashingly witty learnedly allusive style illumed forgotten corners of American history articulated a defiant and passionate localism and written with love and dark humor of his repatriation. Poetry Night at the Ballpark gathers the best of Bill Kauffmans essays and journalism in defense and explication of his alternative America--or Americas. Its discrete pieces are bound by a thematic unity and propulsive energy and are full of unexpected (yet startlingly apposite) connections and revelatory linkages. Whether hes writing about conservative Beats backyard astronomers pacifist West Pointers or Middle America in the movies Bill Kauffman will challenge maybe even change the way you look at American politics and the American provinces.