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Local literary challenge
by The Daily Journal
Sunday, December 17^th, 2006

In the spirit of the 1959 novel The Mouse That Roared by Leonard Wibberley, Mayor Ned Mitchell of Sesser, Ill., has declared "literary war" against The Big Apple.

Mitchell, the mayor of the small Midwestern town featured in Gary Moore's new award-winning Playing with the Enemy, has challenged New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the equivalent of literary dueling pistols at 20 paces. In Bloomberg's corner is New York's own hometown baseball story, The Echoing Green by Joshua Prager.

In an "Our book is as good or better than your book" declaration, Mayor Mitchell has challenged Mayor Bloomberg to provide Playing with the Enemy a major New York review, in exchange for which Mayor Mitchell promises to help New York's baseball story receive a Southern Illinois review.

Mitchell made his challenge in a Federal Express letter.

The Echoing Green is the story about the 1951 playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, featuring Bobby Thomson's shot heard round the world!

In contrast, Playing with the Enemy is the story of Moore's father. Moore grew up and lives in Bourbonnais, but his father was a small-town baseball star, who went on to be a major league catching prospect and play wartime baseball for the Navy.

We're not sure how Mayor Bloomberg can control the book review pages of the New York papers, but we can vouch for Moore's book, having read and reviewed it for The Daily Journal.

We recommend it, both as a page-turning good story and as an interesting piece of World War II history.

Southwest Airlines is the Proud Sponsor of the Playing with the Enemy Hardcover Book Tour!