Archer's Used & Rare Books: Search Used, Out-of-Print and Rare Books Online

I have been a full-time 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. I am a member of the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society (NOBS) and A Book CoOp which operates TomFolio.com. My personal book interests include H.L. Mencken, P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Darwin, Jim Tully, travel, baseball, especially the Negro Leagues, botany, especially history, exploration and economic botany, true crime, and the blues.

After twenty years of chipping away, my friend Mark Dawidziak, TV critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and I are completing the first-ever biography of the hard-boiled writer Jim Tully. Our biography, tentatively titled Broken Shadows (taken from Tully's Shadows of Men), will be published by Kent State University Press in 2010. KSU Press is also reissuing several of Tully's books, most of which have been out of print for decades. The first two, Circus Parade (foreword by Harvey Pekar) and Shanty Irish (foreword by John Sayles), will be issued summer of 2009.

An autobiography of Negro League catcher Frazier Robinson that I worked on was published in 1999:

Catching Dreams: My Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues by Frazier Robinson with Paul Bauer. Foreword by John "Buck" O'Neil. Introduction by Gerald Early. Syracuse University Press, Hardcover, 256pp.

"Robinson's use of the language, at once poetic and unvarnished, is a joy.... By using his last years to immortalize these stories, he contributed as much to the game with a tape recorder as he ever did with a bat or glove."---Allen St. John, New York Times"

Of our many baseball Robinsons-Yank, Wilbert, Norman, Eddie, Brooks, Earl, Frank, Jeff-who'd have thought that the one with the best printed-word rating so far would turn out also to have saved some first-rate photos."---James Bready, The Baltimore Sun

"His memories and observations are quick and lively, capturing a homey slice of African-American history . . . Authentic Americana, with enough balls, strikes, players, and pennant chases to keep the hardcore fans happy."---Kirkus

"The racism that kept him from the major leagues and the bigots who scorned him couldn't diminish his appetite for life. This is an illuminating glimpse into a world limited by racism but defined by individual dignity."---Wes Lukowsky, Booklist (which selected Catching Dreams as one of the 10 best sports books of 1999.)

"One of the rarest if not the rarest of all Negro baseball books, and perhaps one of the rarest baseball books to come down the line in a number of seasons . . . It would not be a stretch to say that Robinson's manuscript might indeed be one of the best baseball books of the new year."---Peter Bjarkman, author of Baseball with a Latin Beat: A History of the Latin American Game and coauthor of Smoke: The Romance of Cuban Baseball

Last book read: Travels of William Bartram

Currently reading: Famine by Liam O'Flaherty

Paul J. Bauer, July 2009

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