Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 11/7/2009

Defending his hard-boiled leadership style, NFL head coach Tom Coughlin explained: "Coaching is making players do what they don't want to do so that they can become what they want to become."

Birthdays:
Al Attles b. 1936
Jim Kaat b. 1938
Joe Niekro b. 1944
Glendon Rusch b. 1974
Mark Philippoussis b. 1976

Packers Fact:
In 1997, rookie safety Darren Sharper returned a fumble 34 yards for a touchdown to cap the scoring in a 45-17 romp over the Dallas Cowboys.

SERIOUS CRIME

This crime novel is about a lot more than solving the crime. The characters are convincingly drawn; Washington, D.C., of today and 20 years ago is a very real and unidealized place; and the crime isn’t just about one evil deed but also about its impact on the world in which it takes place. A richly layered and engrossing novel by one of the writers of HBO’s acclaimed series The Wire—“Heart-in-your-throat gripping from beginning to end,” as Janet Maslin put it in The New York Times.

THE NIGHT GARDENER, by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown, 2006)