Stepping up to the plate on this episode of The Lit Show is Lucas Mann with his acclaimed debut, Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere.

Mann’s book chronicles a year in the life of a minor league baseball team in Clinton, Iowa. Beyond the lives of the LumberKings themselves, Mann investigates the dedicated fans, family members, radio announcer, mascot, and the town itself as seen through the eyes of a transplant who keeps finding himself drawn back to the game, whether at Yankee Stadium or in Clinton’s Depression-era field by the Mississippi River.

David Shields writes: “[Mann’s] book is an impressively unblinking meditation on private and public failure,” and John Beckman compares him to Joan Didion or Gay Talese. Mann was born in New York City and received his MFA from the University of Iowa, where he is currently the Provost’s Visiting Writer in Nonfiction.

Interview by Ben Mauk.

Excerpt

Complete Episode

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