Ball Tales: A Study of Baseball, Basketball, and Football Fiction of the 1930's Through 1960's

This history of American sports fiction traces depictions of baseball, basketball and football in works for all age levels from early dime novels through the 1960s. Chapters cover dime novel heroes Frank and Dick Merriwell; the explosion of sports novels before World War II and its influence on the authors who later wrote for baby boom readers; how sports novels persisted during the Great Depression; the rise and decline of sports pulps; why sports comics failed; postwar heroes Chip Hilton and Bronc Burnett; the lack of sports fiction for females; Duane Decker's Blue Sox books; and the classic John R. Tunis novels. Appendices list sports pulp titles and comic books featuring sports fiction.

Michelle Nolan has been a newspaper and magazine feature writer for more than 40 years, working with such periodicals as Comics Buyer's Guide and Comic Book Marketplace. She lives in Bellingham, Washington.