The Natural

The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) now in a new edition Introduction by Kevin Baker The Natural , Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and in