R Gordon Shepherd – författare

Opinions vary wildly on the subject of baseball's greatest players. Many books have explored the topic, but few delve into baseball's official performance data as thoroughly as this one. The authors analyze the peak performance records of every Hall of Fame player across different eras of baseball history. Using statistical comparisons, they select the Hall's best players at each position for era all-star teams from 1901 to 2020, including standout Black players who starred in the Negro Leagues prior to the racial integration of Major League Baseball in 1947. The book also considers controversial players excluded from Hall membership due to behavior deemed detrimental to the integrity of baseball (consorting with gamblers and use of performance enhancing drugs) but whose performance records still stand.

The authors enliven their statistical comparisons with narrative overviews of different baseball eras; provide humanizing background stories about each era's greatest players; and discuss the ways in which baseball reflects, and has sometimes influenced, American culture, including darker aspects of the game's history of racism, gambling, and drug use.

This handbook explores contemporary Mormonism within a global context. The authors provide a nuanced picture of a historically American religion in the throes of the same kinds of global change that virtually every conservative faith tradition faces today. They explain where and how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has penetrated national and cultural boundaries in Latin America, Oceania, Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as in North America beyond the borders of Mormon Utah. They also address numerous concerns within a multinational, multicultural church: What does it mean to be a Latter-day Saint in different world regions? What is the faith’s appeal to converts in these places? What are the peculiar problems for members who must manage Mormon identities in conjunction with their different national, cultural, and ethnic identities? How are leaders dealing with such issues as the status of women in a patriarchal church, the treatment of LGBTQ members, increasing disaffiliation of young people, and decreasing growth rates in North and Latin America while sustaining increasing growth in parts of Asia and Africa?