Fail Better Why Baseball Matters

"Mark Kingwell is a beautiful writer, a lucid thinker and a patient teacher His insights are intellectual anchors in a fast-changing world. " Naomi Klein

" Mark Kingwell] illuminates on almost every page. " Los Angeles Times

"Kingwell's musings on angling inevitably lead to in-depth essays on the inherent nature of and reasoning for various aspects of fishing, such as casting, killing, patience, and outdoorsmanship. . . . Catch and Release is] filled with a sense of joy and awe. " Publishers Weekly

Taking seriously the idea that baseball is a study in failurea very successful batter manages a hit only three of every ten attemptsHarper's Magazine contributing editor Mark Kingwell explores ways in which the game teaches us lessons on fragility, contingency, and community.

Weaving elements of memoir, philosophical reflection, sports writing, and humour, the book serves as an unofficial follow-up to Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life, which won over readers by offering an intelligent but accessible look into the deep waters of angling.

Never pretentious, always entertaining, Fail Better is set to be the homerun non-fiction title of the spring.

Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author or co-author of eighteen books, including the national bestsellers Better Living (1998), The World We Want (2000), Concrete Reveries (2008), and Glenn Gould (2009). In addition to many scholarly articles, his writing has appeared in more than forty mainstream magazines and newspapers. His most recent books are the essay collections Unruly Voices (2012) and Measure Yourself Against the Earth (2015).

Taking seriously the idea that baseball is a study in failure--a very successful batter manages a base hit in just three of every ten attempts--Mark Kingwell argues that there is no better tutor of human failure's enduring significance than this strange, crooked game of base, where geometry becomes poetry.

Weaving elements of memoir, philosophical reflection, sports writing, and humour, Fail Better is an intellectual love letter to baseball by one of North America's most engaging philosophers. Kingwell illustrates complex concepts like theoretically infinite game-space, -time out of time, - and the rules of civility with accessible examples drawn from the game, its history, and his own halting efforts to hit 'em where they ain't. Beyond a -Beckett meets baseball- study in failure, Kingwell crafts a thoughtful appreciation of why sports matter, and how they change our vision of the world.

Never pretentious, always entertaining, Fail Better is set to be the homerun non-fiction title of the season.