Tiny Raccoon Books

Saturday 12-4pm, come meet friend of the store and author A.M. Gittlitz and chat with him about his book, "Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People’s Team". Copies of the book will be for sale and A.M. will sign copies. We will be in front of the store if weather permits.

About the book:
A love letter to a franchise and a thrilling study of New York City, Metropolitans traces the electric and calamitous history of the New York Mets.

Metropolitans is for Mets fans, New York partisans, and everyone interested in the Mobius strip dynamic of sports and politics, the history of the national game, or the beautiful contradiction of baseball itself: a middle-class game owned by billionaires, in which the players—like the spectators—look to traverse the diamond and ultimately safely escape its many dangers.

Along the way, A.M. Gittlitz re-introduces us to an eccentric cast of Metsian characters: Joan Payson, the first woman to buy a Major League Baseball team; a young Tom Seaver with an interest in progressive politics; and the contentious but beloved Mike Piazza.
Gittlitz leads us through baseball’s amateur beginnings to the Mets’ first heady World Series on the heels of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements that many Mets players participated in. He guides us to the bad boy years, the exploitative development of farm academies in developing nations, and their inglorious purchase by a new breed of capitalist—even after which they remained lovable losers.

Metropolitans brilliantly shows us that sports have long been a site
of political struggle, rousing class consciousness, and animating fights for racial equality. From purportedly calming riots in ’69 to producing some of the greatest chokes in sporting history, from integration to desperate labor struggle against franchise owners, Metropolitans makes a deeply humane and convincing argument for the fascinating singularity of the New York Mets—and why they are not just the team of the counterculture, the freaks, and the losers, but the beloved team of anyone with a beating heart.

About the author:
A.M. Gittlitz is an organizer and writer focusing on counterculture and radical politics. He is the author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism and co-host of the podcast This Wreckage. He lives in Ridgewood, Queens, but can be often found Tuesday nights at the Vegan City food stand at Citi Field

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Come meet local author Irvina Lew and chat with her about her book, Forays in France on July 25th from 12-4pm. Copies of Irvinas book will be for sale and she will sign copies.

July 25, 2026
277 Railroad Avenue, Sayville, NY.
Free

About the book:
Forays in France: A Flavorful Memoir is a culinary travelogue about Paris, The Riviera and Wine Regions inspired by the Riviera apartment cancellation-due-to Covid. That March, in 2020, more than 60 years of travel memories started to surface, and the subsequent vignettes recall dozens of trips from 1958, as a Sorbonne student, to 2025 as an older student at the University. Delicious anecdotes reveal forays by barge, cruise ships and a riverboat, by rental car and train with stays at two-to-five-star hotels and meals at cafes, markets to Michelin-starred restaurants. Favored recipes, lesser-known insights, and travel tips add depth.

About the author
Irvina Lew, an award-winning travel writer and author of the newly launched Forays in France: A Flavorful Memoir, is a longtime contributor to guidebooks, magazines and websites. Her culinary travelogue spans six plus decades of travel to France and features delectable anecdotes about Paris, The Riviera and Wine Regions. Irvina lives in Bay Shore, formerly taught French and Spanish there and in Brentwood and served as national spokesperson for Ziploc storage bags and Contadina Pasta Ready.

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Tomorrow from 12-4pm, see Long Island author and comedian AL Isaacs at our store for a Meet and Greet. The author will be selling and signing copies of his book.

277 Railroad Avenue, Sayville, NY, 11782
Free

About the book:

What if everything you knew about yourself turned out to be only half the story?

Comedian Al Isaacs grew up as an only child with loving parents, a gift for laughter, and a simple truth about his family until an innocent phone call from his mother’s doctor just weeks before his father’s passing exposed a decades-old family secret—he had been part of a gray-market adoption, hidden behind false paperwork and decades of silence.

Finding Mary Smith is a funny, raw, and deeply human memoir about adoption, identity, and belonging. Isaacs takes readers on an unforgettable search for the woman who gave him life and the truth that nearly vanished with her name. His journey leads from suburban New York to the smoky coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, where his birth mother once sang alongside the dreamers of the 1960s folk music scene. With the timing of a comic and the honesty of a son trying to understand his past, Isaacs turns a life-altering discovery into a story of love, loss, and self-discovery.

About the author
Al Isaacs is a writer, storyteller, and retired comedian whose work blends humor with deeply personal truth. Twice named Long Island’s Best Comedian by the Long Island Press, he spent more than twenty years teaching improvisational comedy at theaters, comedy clubs, corporate events, and Hofstra University’s Continuing Education program.

His memoir, Finding Mary Smith, tells the true story of accidentally discovering his gray market adoption and the extraordinary, against-all-odds journey to find his birth family after more than fifty years. Known for finding humor in unlikely places, Isaacs writes with honesty, heart, and a comedian’s instinct for timing—even when the subject turns deeply emotional. He lives in the New York area with his wife and son, and believes that the best stories are the ones that prove real life is stranger, funnier, and more meaningful than fiction