[3] Larry Colton has published hundreds of magazine articles for publications including Esquire, New York Times, Sports Illustrated and Ladies Home Journal.

[10] Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, observed that Colton placed his subjects "in the intricately tangled social contexts that lend weight and meaning far beyond the game.

[14] The book is based on interviews with several of the survivors, and tells the interlocking stories of four shipmates on the Grenadier, from their childhoods through enlistment, courtships and deployment, and on to the horrors of life in a Japanese slave labor camp.

[15][16] Colton's 2013 book Southern League tells the story of the 1964 Birmingham Barons, the first integrated professional baseball team in Alabama, in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for racial equality.

[17][18] The explores both the pennant race and Birmingham's complicated racial past, and the team's relationship with its young manager, Haywood Sullivan, a white Alabamian who went on to own the Boston Red Sox.