Archer's Used and Rare Books, Inc.

I have been a bookseller since 1986 and closed my shop in 2001 to concentrate on mail order, appraisals, and do some writing. My stock includes a large collection of books on Baseball as well as True Crime, Ohioana, Botany, and Music. My books. In 1992 a man walked into my bookshop in Kent, Ohio, and asked for a copy of The Bruiser by Jim Tully. I'd never heard of the book or its author despite the fact that many credited Tully with being the father of hard-boiled fiction. Worse, Tully began writing in Kent in the early 20th century. Nineteen years later, Mark Dawidziak and I completed Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler. Ken Burns contributed a foreword.We've also written introductions to reissues of six of Tully's books: Beggars of Life, The Bruiser (Fwd by Gerald Early), Circus Parade (Fwd by Harvey Pekar), Shanty Irish (Fwd by John Sayles), Blood on the Moon, and Shadows of Men. One of many delays was another book: Catching Dreams: My Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues by Frazier Robinson w/ Paul Bauer. Fwd. Buck O'Neil. Intro. Gerald Early. Frazier caught, among others, Satchel Paige and Leon Day. When he wasn't playing baseball, he was hitting the jazz clubs of KC, NY, and Baltimore where he saw Nat King Cole, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and others. Redd Foxx was one of his bar-hopping buddies. Frazier loved baseball and jazz.