Recently finished

“Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” - John Carreyrou: Details the history of Theranos and its founder. 

“I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer” - Michelle McNamara

Reading now:

“Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco” - Bryan Burrough and John Helyar

In honor of the 50th anniversary;

********************

Robert: I read Helyar's book back in 2015. A terrific read and one of the best baseball book ever written. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a hardcover edition for my permanent library. I also believe that it won the Casey Award as the best baseball book of 1994.

For the take from the owners/commissioner's side you might want to try Bowie Kuhn's book HARDBALL.  I don't think it's as good as Helyar's or Miller's books are, but it is somewhat interesting, although every even it seen from the stubborn perspective that "the greedy players will be the downfall of America's pastime!"  Kuhn holds up the Flood decision as a victory (when it was actually more of a punt when it came to the reserve clause) and decries the Messersmith decision as misguided and contrary to legal guidelines.

Kuhn certainly isn't brilliant, but it's interesting to get his views on things like the Pilots move to Milwaukee, the effort to get the Padres to Washington D.C. and the owners lessening control of the game with the rise of the players union.

After reading Miller's book, I am not sure if I would ever want to read what Kuhn has to say about the rise of the players' union. Miller didn't pull many punches in what he had to say about Kuhn and his performance as baseball's commissioner. In fact, Miller references Kuhn's comments in HARDBALL so often in his book that I often thought I was reading a legal brief of Miller v. Kuhn.  :-) 

Between what Miller and Helyar wrote in their respective books, there isn't much the owners (or Kuhn) could say that would put them in a better light. Both authors made it clear that Kuhn was very out of touch with both baseball's labor issues and his role as the owners' mouthpiece.

I think Kuhn saw himself as some sort of white knight using his position as Commissioner to protect baseball from the angry hordes (which to the owners were anyone who wanted to change the status quo - Flood, Miller, Messersmith), anyone who ruled against the owners and the Commissioner (Seitz) or the esteemed Charles O. Finley.

As I mentioned, the most interesting things in Kuhn's book are the Seattle Pilots move to Milwaukee and the Washington Senators move to Dallas and the steps Kuhn tried to take to pit teams back in Seattle.  Kuhn is more than a little sanctimonious in regards to Finley, who despite being crass and cheap, was a brilliant baseball man (albeit an unconventional one).

Kuhn's book is great for understanding how out of touch he was and how little he understood about the direction baseball was headed.