A Good Innings

When Australian cricket legend Donald Bradman fell ill with peritonitis in London in September 1934, King George V was not amused. "I want to know everything," he reportedly said upon hearing the news. It was a measure of the esteem in which Bradman was held, even by his nemeses the English.

This revealing anecdote — and much more — is chronicled in Alan Eason's book, The A-Z of Bradman , an alphabetical compendium of useful and useless information on the venerated cricketer, who died in...