Robert Reynolds: 504 books

Tom Poorman was a versatile baseball player. He was regularly a right fielder for several minor and major league teams from 1875-1889. A small man in stature, he also pitched throughout his career. He stole 88 bases as a major leaguer in 1887, with the Philadelphia Athletics, and 97 with Milwaukee,...

Don Cockell was ranked 5th in the world among heavyweight boxing contenders when he battled heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano for the title in May 1955. Cockell's record was an uneven one. There were some successes but there were also losses to middleweights, and 5 knockouts by merely average opponents....

Charles Sonny Liston was an ex-con who entered boxing in 1953 after serving a term in prison in Missouri. He learned to fight on the streets of St. Louis. The first two years of the 1960s decade were eventful for Sonny, not just because of speculation of a possible title shot with heavyweight champion...

Joe Louis was the most marketable sports figure on earth at the beginning of 1937. On January 20, 1937 he fought an upstart Jewish boxer, Bob Pastor, at Yankee Stadium. The former New York University football player went the distance, 11 rounds, wounding Louis' ego in the process. This bout occurred...

Carmen Miranda was a sensational star of stage and film who was born in Portugal. She came to Rio de Janiero as a child, where she was raised by her parents. Carmen compensated for her mediocre voice with distinct and alluring movements of her hands. Her hands, she believed, were her most valuable...

Mike DeJohn came from a family of boxers in Syracuse, New York. His brother, Joey, was a popular middleweight in the 1950s, as had been his brother Ralph in the late 1930s. Another brother, Johnny, managed Mike for the better part of his boxing career. Mike gained an early unexpected victory with...

Charles the Bug Workman was imprisoned for a generation for the murders of Dutch Schultz and three of his associates. The murders were among the most grisly in the annals of organized crime history. The slayings occurred in the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey in October 1935. My e-book looks...

Albert Tannanbaum was a member of the notorious kill for hire organization in Brooklyn known as Murder, Inc. He assassinated people for money and fingered others to be killed. One of the men he was involved in murdering was Hyman Yuran, a dress manufacturer whose body wasn't discovered for many...

Morris "Dimples" Wolensky was an associate of Murder, Inc. founder Louis Lepke Buchalter. Murder, Inc. was a murder for hire operation that flourished in Brownsville, Brooklyn in the 1930s and 1940s. Buchalter did much to build the national crime syndicate. Wolensky duped Buchalter into thinking that...

Baron Wolfgang von Trips was a German nobleman from the Rhineland of Germany. He gave up his castle and privileged life to enter the sport of Formula One racing in the mid 1950s. By September 1961 he was on the threshold of winning the Formula One World Championship, as a driver of a Ferrari. Trips...

Gerhard Mitter is not among the most well-known European drivers of his era. However his impact had more to do with his versatility than longevity, which he lacked. The German completely dominated the sport of hill climbing, winning the world championship in three consecutive years from 1966-1968....

Evel Knievel's career as a motorcycle daredevil and stuntman reached its climax in early September 1974. A planned jump over the Grand Canyon in Arizona had been nixed by the United States government. So Knievel rented land near Twin Falls, Idaho at the Snake River Canyon. The jump was planned to...

Irma Grese was among the Nazi war criminals tried and found guilty at the Lueneburg, Germany trial held from September-November 1945. Grese aspired to be a nurse but was assigned to concentration camp work by the government labour exchange. She admired Adolf Hilter, as did many German youths, and...

Terrorism is not a new issue in France, not by any means. The recent attacks which killed 12 editors and cartoonists at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, brings to mind the history of terrorism during the war for Algerian Independence from 1953-1962. In those years France...