Military 2019 SS

20 2019 NEW RELEASES Play Ball! Doughboys and Baseball during the Great War Alexander F. Barnes, Peter L. Belmonte & Samuel O. Barnes Baseball is the most American game. No other sporting contest so closely reflects the American psyche and culture. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that part of the game is clearly defined and unchanged since play first began, while another part of the game fluctuates and changes constantly. And if baseball is the truest American game, the Doughboys of the Great War were its most loyal proponents. By 1918, there were over four million of them: two million in France fighting in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and another two million in stateside training camps awaiting their turn to cross the Atlantic to the western front. Playing wherever they could find enough room to throw a ball, they brought the game with them into the front lines and then into the occupation of Germany. Sharing their military service, in combat and on the baseball diamond, were a number of famous professional ballplayers, managers, lawyers, and politicians, and even an umpire. Alexander F. Barnes served in the Marine Corps and Army National Guard. He is currently the Virginia National Guard Command historian. FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS OF WORLD WAR I 978-0-7643-5547-9 $29.99 | 192 pp. IMAGES FROM "OVER THERE" 978-0-7643-5635-3 $24.99 | 144 pp. Many major- and minor-league ballplayers traded their team uniforms for Army khaki and Navy blue Many major-league, Negro League, and minor-league ballplayers served in the ranks Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Casey Stengel, and Grover Cleveland Alexander SPECS ISBN: 978-0-7643-5678-0 Size: 6" x 9" Illustrations: 158 color and b/w images Pages: 256 Binding: hard cover Price: $26.99 How baseball connected Doughboys to back home before the internet. – Margaret M. McMahon, PhD, author of With Rifle and Shovel: The 51st Pioneer Infantry Regiment in WWI AVAILABLE FEBRUARY Samuel O. Barnes is an archivist at Army Logistics University at Fort Lee, Virginia. Peter L. Belmonte is a retired US Air Force officer and freelance historian.