Veteran Sportswriter, Jack Cavanaugh to speak at Fairfield Public Library

The Fairfield Public Library will be hosting veteran sportswriter and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Jack Cavanaugh on Tuesday, September 25 at 7 p.m.  He will be presenting his book, Season of ’42:  Joe D., Teddy Ballgame, and Baseball’s Fight to Survive a Turbulent First Year of War (June 2012), in the Memorial Room of the Main Library, 1080 Old Post Road.

This book recounts the resilience of baseball during America’s first full year in World War II when the Japanese and Germans held the upper hand, and the future looked uncertain for the United States.  Cavanaugh tells the story of how major league baseball played on with most of its same players from 1941, including Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.  These two men played in their first and last wartime season under extraordinary circumstances, climaxed by one of the most dramatic pennant races in baseball history.  The war in 1942, big league baseball, and the dramatically changed life on the American home front are chronologically interwoven in this book.

Jack Cavanaugh is a veteran sportswriter whose work has appeared on the sports pages of The New York Times, for which he has covered hundreds of assignments.  He is the author of Giants Among Men (2008) and Tunney (2006), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in biography.  In addition, Cavanaugh has been a frequent contributor to Sports Illustrated and has written for Reader’s Digest, Tennis and Gold magazines as well as other national publications.  Cavanaugh is currently a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and lives with his wife in Wilton, CT.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.  Advanced registration is required due to the limited space.  All programs at the Fairfield Public Library are free of charge.  For more information and to register for this event call 203-256-3160, or visit us on the web www.fairfieldpubliclibrary.org .  Follow the Fairfield Public Library on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fairfieldpublib and Facebook: www.facebook.com/fairfieldlibrary.