When my father bought The Bill James HistoricalBaseball Abstract, I was skeptical of its quality. It's filled with baseballstatistics, player rankings and descriptions of every decade of baseball. Iscoffed at it, but my little brother picked it up and sped through a good portionof the 1,008 pages. Intrigued, I started reading it, and soon ate it all up.

The book describes each decade of the game, beginning in the nineteenthcentury, and discusses the greatest player of each decade, the changes in thegame, and even the uniforms. Little stories about players and their mannerismsinclude a feature about the park where the Boston Braves played.

Jamesoffers his list of top players of all time, and also provides all-time bestrankings for every position. Anecdotes line the pages about players and are oftencomical, sometimes ironic.

This is a great book because of its in-depthdiscussions of all the players and how it explains what made them special.