Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco—the Bash Brothers—ushered in a new era of muscle-bound power hitters in baseball in the late 1980s. Suddenly balls were flying out of the parks like never before, and the rest of baseball stood up, took notice, and followed suit. Baseball’s bodybuilding revolution, with its resultant steroid infestation, was here to stay, and many experts today point to these two players as a large reason why. Author Dale Tafoya has interviewed more than 150 teammates, coaches, scouts, and friends who knew McGwire and Canseco during that era, including former A’s general manager Sandy Alderson, former team president Roy Eisenhardt, former commissioner Fay Vincent, Hall-of-Fame closer Dennis Eckersley, and 2004 Ford C. Frick award-winning legendary broadcaster Lon Simmons. They provide first-person commentary on what living and playing with the larger-than-life duo was like, and relate the shock and awe that followed both players and the team as well. Tafoya also investigates the players’ pre-Oakland careers, how they exploded upon reaching the majors with the A’s, and what happened when the two moved on. While Canseco has admitted his steroid use, McGwire ducked the question when Congress asked about his use by saying, “I am not here to discuss the past.” Tafoya investigates the claims of each. The Bash Brothers revolutionized baseball; Tafoya discusses whether it was for better or for worse and paints a colorful portrait of the duo’s rise to popularity and their ensuing exposure and shame. Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed is the first book to fully investigate how these two players helped shape baseball for years to come.

This revised edition of a book first published in 2010 supplements the original account of the 116 bat species then known to be found in Southern and Central Africa with an additional eight newly described species. The chapters on evolution, biogeography, ecology and echolocation have been updated, citing dozens of recently published papers. The book covers the latest systematic and taxonomic studies, ensuring that the names and relationships of bats in this new edition reflect current scientific knowledge. The species accounts provide descriptions, measurements and diagnostic characters as well as detailed information about the distribution, habitat, roosting habits, foraging ecology and reproduction of each species. The updated species distribution maps are based on 116 recorded localities. A special feature of the 2010 publication was the mode of identification of families, genera and species by way of character matrices rather than the more generally used dichotomous keys. Since then these matrices have been tested in the field and, where necessary, slightly altered for this edition. New photographs fill in gaps and updated sonograms aid with bat identification in acoustic surveys. The bibliography, which now contains more than 700 entries, will be an invaluable aid to students and scientists wishing to track down original research.