Since I hope some of you still read books, I decided to use Sunday to inform you of the latest offerings in the sports category.

Today’s entry is Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, written by Paul Dickson. The book is the first biography of the legendary owner and showman, who dared to defy convention in baseball.

Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck, is considered a classic. However, that book was written in 1962. Much happened in his life after that, including saving the White Sox for Chicago with his purchase of the team in 1975.

Veeck was one of baseball’s most memorable characters. It’s no surprise that his biography makes a compelling tale. In a review of the book, Dave Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times writes:

Bill Veeck works as a wonderful companion piece to Veeck as in Wreck and the 1965 Hustler’s Handbook, both written by Veeck with newspaperman Ed Linn. Dickson’s biography looks at “Sport Shirt Bill” and goes beyond the “Disco Demolition” and the Eddie Gaedel midget stunt for which Veeck is most often associated. Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick is a portrait of a uniquely rounded and compassionate spirit.

Here are some other blurbs from the critics on Amazon.

“Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick incorporates the picaresque anecdotes and populist charm of Veeck’s memoirs into a narrative marked by Mr. Dickson’s broad knowledge and fluid authority. The result is a biography that newcomers to the Veeck legend are likely to find immensely appealing, but one that also makes him new again for those who have already savored the baseball showman’s own episodic volumes.”—Maxwell Carter, The Wall Street Journal

“Any man who wanted to be included on Richard Nixon’s enemies list is worthy of a searching biography—and Paul Dickson has been kind ehough to do that for us with his compelling portrait of the unregenerate Bill Veeck.”—Ray Robinson, author of Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig In His Time

“BILL VEECK, in the language of the subject, is a homerun—a bases clearer. The story of the remarkable full-life of this pioneering baseball character is told with the steadiness, detail and flare that we have come to expect from Paul Dickson,  the premier all-star writer and reporter. The book is great fun—much like being in the bleachers during a day game.”—Jim Lehrer

“Bill Veeck didn’t want to break rules, he insisted, just “test their elasticity.” He wasn’t talking only about baseball. The master showman, who famously sent a three-foot-seven-inch batter to the plate, also desegregated the American League and proudly marched in the funeral procession for Dr. Martin Luther King—on his peg leg and without crutches. BILL VEECK revisits a golden age for baseball, a pivotal time for America and some hilarious moments in the life of a man who helped to change both.”—Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Chicago Tribune

“Bill Veeck was inventive, courageous, principled, and hugely influential–the Thomas Paine of a revolutionary time in baseball. He told his own story in VEECK–AS IN WRECK, back in 1962, but even a man as famously candid as Veeck cannot be fully portrayed in an autobiography. He has awaited a clear-eyed admiring chronicler, and in Paul Dickson he has found him. This amazingly detailed, delicious biography is, as its subject might have titled it, VEECK–AS IN SPEC-tacular!”—John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball, and author of Baseball in the Garden of Eden

“We knew Bill Veeck was the baron of ballyhoo. We didn’t know (or at least I didn’t) that he was a patriot as high-flying as Ted Williams, a racial barrier-buster as fearless as Branch Rickey, a gadfly who set the mold for Charlie Finley, and a one-of-a-kind iconoclast who was irresistible. So don’t resist. Buy Paul Dickson’s new book and have a blast.”—Larry Tye, author of Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend

“A definitive look at one of baseball’s greatest innovators and ambassadors. A must-read.”—Claire Smith, ESPN

“Bill Veeck has finally met his match.  Paul Dickson, consummate baseball historian, has given Veeck the biography he deserves. Meticulously reported and exhaustively researched, Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick is, like its subject, a show-stopper.”—Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood and Sandy Koufax

“[S]ure to entertain is Paul Dickson’s latest: Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick (Walker). As you’d expect, Veeck’s trials, tribulations and experiments with the great game as its greatest promoter may well hold center stage, but Dickson has done something with this biography that I particularly loved about John Sickels’ bio of Bob Feller, which is to write a book that also covers this man’s life outside of the game. Maybe this is a matter of giving the “Greatest Generation” its due, but Veeck was a combat volunteer who lost his leg in the Marines during World War II.”—Christina Kahrl, ESPN, “Sweet Spot”

“Paul Dickson has knocked another one out of the park with Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick a skillfully written biography, scrupulously researched, brimming with revealing anecdotes and historical detail, while unpacking Veeck’s views of social injustice (inside and outside the park),along with his quest to provide fans with a show even if their team wasn’t on the road to clinching a pennant….So if you’re planning your summer reading list, I recommend you place  Dickson’s enlightening and highly entertaining biography on one of baseball’s most combative if influential owners at the very top of your list.”—Bill Lucey, The Morning Delivery.

“The proof of goodness is usually in the details, so it becomes clear right off the bat that Dickson has written an authoritative work.”—Mike Downey, The Los Angeles Times.

“In his lively (and occasionally beatific) biography, baseball and cultural historian Paul Dickson brings Veeck to life, relentlessly digging into his career and times to create a portrait of the kind of guy you’d like to have in your corner – or at your table for a drink.” – Chris Foran, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

To be ignorant of Bill Veeck’s legacy to baseball is akin to being unaware of Steve Jobs’ role in computers. A maverick and visionary, Bill Veeck transformed the way owners promoted the game while captivating the press and public with his charisma and penchant for challenging the status quo. His controversial signing of Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League, is an example of a Veeck initiative deftly chronicled by Paul Dickson, baseball’s pre-eminent lexicographer (“The Dickson Baseball Dictionary”). “Bill Veeck” comes as close to a “must-read” as any baseball book in recent memory. Grade: Home run.”–Mark Hodermarsky, Cleveland Plain Dealer