Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 3/10/2012

"I think there's a sexiness in infield hits because they require technique," said Ichiro Suzuki in 2009. "I'd rather impress the chicks with my technique than my brute strength."

Ara Parseghian b. 1923
Leroy Ellis b. 1940
Austin Carr b. 1948
Red Woodson b. 1965
Shannon Miller b. 1977

LIVING HISTORY

There is no shortage of Joan of Arc biographies. Nearly 700 years after her death, it’s still hard to resist a provincial teenage girl so driven by conviction that she convinced a king to let her lead his army into battle. What Larissa Taylor’s slender, engaging book does is bring forth the nuance of Joan’s character, throwing into relief her determined and inflexible leadership—a leadership that did nothing short of changing the course of European history.

THE VIRGIN WARRIOR: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOAN OF ARC, by Larissa Juliet Taylor (Yale University Press, 2010)