Scaring Myself Again: Far-Flung Adventures of a TV Journalist

Abel, Allen

Harpercollins

Flatbush Odyssey: A Journey Through the Heart of Brooklyn

At the age of 43, writer Allen Abel decided to move home to Brooklyn, stay with his mother (in the same apartment in which he grew up), and explore and write about the borough of his birth. For several months he wandered along Flatbush Avenue, the thoroughfare that runs like a spine through Brooklyn. The result is a delightful family memoir and exploration of a unique place. He hobnobs with Mohawk high-steel workers, tries to learn voodoo secrets from Haitian immigrants, commiserates with policemen detailed to the subway, and chats with an ex-zookeeper in Prospect Park. He revisits the scenes of his childhood, samples social life in distant Flatlands, and hunts for horseshoe crabs on the shoreline. Flatbush Odyssey is a revelation, and in it Allen Abel has produced a marvellous piece of storytelling.

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

MCCLELLAND STEWART

At the age of 43, writer Allen Abel decided to move home to Brooklyn, stay with his mother (in the same apartment in which he grew up), and explore and write about the borough of his birth. For several months he wandered along Flatbush Avenue, the thoroughfare that runs like a spine through Brooklyn. The result is a delightful family memoir and exploration of a unique place. He hobnobs with Mohawk high-steel workers, tries to learn voodoo secrets from Haitian immigrants, commiserates with policemen detailed to the subway, and chats with an ex-zookeeper in Prospect Park. He revisits the scenes of his childhood, samples social life in distant Flatlands, and hunts for horseshoe crabs on the shoreline. Flatbush Odyssey is a revelation, and in it Allen Abel has produced a marvellous piece of storytelling.

Travel

United States

For many years, as news correspondent, television host, and journalist, Allen Abel has travelled to some of the world’s most fascinating, remote, or newsworthy spots to bring back his stories – often offbeat, moving, perceptive, or humorous, but always wonderfully written. Now, in Abel’s Outback, he has drawn on his writing of the last decade. Here is a sampling of ten years of adventure on all six continents. Whether he is hunting for the wild platypus with an Australian forest ranger, boating up the Amazon with a descendant of Charles Darwin, journeying to catch a glimpse of remote Timbuktu, cringing before the oil-well fires in Kuwait, taking tea with cousins of the Queen Mum, spending Christmas in Hong Kong, reporting on the plight of a Sudanese taxi driver in Inuvik (how do you have sundown prayers in a place where the sun doesn’t go down?), or revisiting one of the strangest spots of all – his native Brooklyn – Allen Abel is inquisitive, original, observant, and often hilariously funny. Fans of Allen Abel will greet this book with delight – but so will anyone who enjoys high adventure and superb writing. • Allen Abel was prominent in the television coverage of the Sydney Olympics, and his reportage for the National Post received highly favourable attention • Abel is also regularly before television audiences as a feature host on “Hockey Night in Canada” • Allen Abel is widely admired as an excellent writer – and these pieces will add to that reputation

Abel's Outback: Explorations and Misadventures on Six Continents, 1990-2000

Travel Writing

Features a new chapter.At the age of 43, writer Allen Abel decided to move home to Brooklyn, stay with his mother (in the same apartment in which he grew up), and explore and write about the borough of his birth. For several months he wandered along Flatbush Avenue, the thoroughfare that runs like a spine through Brooklyn. The result is a delightful family memoir and exploration of a unique place. He hobnobs with Mohawk high-steel workers, tries to learn voodoo secrets from Haitian immigrants, commiserates with policemen detailed to the subway, and chats with an ex-zookeeper in Prospect Park. He revisits the scenes of his childhood, samples social life in distant Flatlands, and hunts for horseshoe crabs on the shoreline. Flatbush Odyssey is a revelation, and in it Allen Abel has produced a marvellous piece of storytelling.

History

Americas

"This could be a great work of fiction. The damndest thing is it's all fact." - Michael Farber, Sports Illustrated It was a time of Prohibition, jazz, and gangland murder, and it was baseball's age of magic, when even Hall of Fame players believed that rubbing the hump of a hunchback guaranteed a hit. Broken and deformed by a childhood fall from a seesaw, Hughie McLoon never grew taller than forty-nine inches but he made himself one of the lucky ones. He was chosen as the batboy and mascot of the Philadelphia Athletics. Although the team finished last in each of the three seasons that the A's rubbed his hump and Hughie tended their bats, he became a local celebrity. He loved the crowds and they loved him back. Graduating from batboy to boxing manager, and running his own speakeasy while serving as a secret agent for the Chief of Police, Hughie was the toast of Philly until one summer night in 1928 he was caught in a murderous crossfire outside his tavern. Twenty-six years old, he bled to death on Cuthbert Street. The next day, 15,000 admirers lined up to see his four-foot corpse. The age of magic was now over. The Short Life of Hughie McLoon is Allen Abel's haunting and stylish biography of the most remarkable and beloved of the baseball mascots, and a new chapter in the complicated mythology of the American dream.

The Short Life of Hughie McLoon: A True Story of Baseball, Magic and Murder

Sutherland House Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Abel, Allen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Abel, Allen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Abel, Allen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Scaring Myself Again: Far-Flung Adventures of a TV Journalist

Flatbush Odyssey: A Journey Through the Heart of Brooklyn

Flatbush Odyssey: A Journey Through the Heart of Brooklyn

Abel's Outback: Explorations and Misadventures on Six Continents, 1990-2000

Flatbush Odyssey: A Journey Through the Heart of Brooklyn

The Short Life of Hughie McLoon: A True Story of Baseball, Magic and Murder