One of the AAUGH.com elves slipped me this image:

Billie Jean King is a logical choice to write introduction. Actually, I was just explaining Billie Jean and Bobby Riggs to a friend who wasn’t around for the 1970s – so in case there’s any of those in our audience here goes. BJK was not only one of the key tennis players of her day, but she was at the forefront of popularizing women’s tennis. The central event of this came when Bobby Riggs, a top tennis player from the 1940s, announced that even in his current state, he could still beat any female player, anywhere. This bit of trumped-up chauvanism was followed through by his taking on and demolishing Margaret Court, a top female player. This all turned into a grand circus when BJK agreed to take him on in a competition refered to as The Battle Of The Sexes. In a tennis match that proved nothing but was great theater and drew huge attention, Billie Jean drove the guy into the dust. That was 1973, which explains the timing of this intro, in the book reprinting the 1973 and 1974 strips.

This is not, by the way, the first time Ms. King has written an intro for Peanuts. In the 1970s, she wrote an intro for Snoopy’s Tennis Book. Also, Schulz provided Snoopy illustrations for her book, Tennis Love. Beyond that, she and Schulz were strong personal friends, so perhaps this will be an introduction with some strong insight and value. (Sadly, the Kristin Chenowith intro in the upcoming volume 11 turns out to instead be an interview, which means that instead of Ms. Chenowith having to find something of interest to say about Peanuts, an interviewer asks questions hoping to get something interesting out of her and coming out with, well, not that much.)

And a quick one for my fellow book-and-tech fans: Amazon is now taking orders for their second-generation Kindle. Looks sweet.

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