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frogcatcher3's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic read. I can't believe I hadn't read this yet.
kaqueershi's review against another edition
4.0
I am angry beyond words that I will never be able to write like this.
nymfan86's review against another edition
4.0
For sheer eloquence, The Boys of Summer, is the best baseball book I've read. The first half of the book focuses on the 1952-53 Brooklyn Dodgers and is among the finest American writing. Kahn evokes the passion and beauty of baseball like no other. His writing puts you right into Ebbets Field. The second half, while still quite good, loses a bit of steam as it focuses on the players in their lives after baseball. For most of the them, the most important aspect of their baseball life was the integration of baseball. It is interesting to hear these men talk about their past lives, but it is the portrayal of those lives in the first half of the book, that make this a baseball classic.
danodog's review against another edition
5.0
The best sports books I've ever read. I love hockey more than baseball but this book which focuses on the one of the best baseball teams that never one the world series is wonderful. It harkens back to a time in the 40's and 50's where men lived by virtues and values that had been shaped by their life experiences. This was the first team to field a black player, Jackie Robinson, as well as field more blacks than whites several years later. The interviews with the players during and years afterwards is heart warming in it's simplicity. Yes I shed a few tears reading this it is that powerful. Anyone who loves baseball should read this book, it's unforgettable.
tartancrusader's review against another edition
4.0
I only managed to read half of this and was forced to stop. It was too painful to read the accounts of these once-great men, reduced to wrack and ruin by the ravages of time. I'll return to it one day but not yet, not yet.
jbriaz's review against another edition
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.25
eely225's review against another edition
5.0
"... as with an under-boiled potato, O'Malley's warmth was mostly external." -Roger Kahn
The flairs are literary and they are incisive. They are morally charged and they are nostalgic. The asides make the book because the plot doesn't matter. There are one hundred pages of plot, one hundred pages of baseball history and championships and striving. And then we see that the real lives, even the ones lived amidst that strife, were asides and flairs and intangibles.
The title is so misleading. I avoided this book for a long time because it seemed like it would merely bask in the nostalgic glow of long gone halcyon days. The Brooklyn Dodgers, that small thing uprooted and transformed into the picture of capital-centric glitz, tend to take on the hue of a baseball martyr. So I hesitated and demurred.
The title is there for a reason though. Kahn, having seen the reality of the team from the front row, knew well enough that he could value the importance of the team without making it something that it isn't. So he does his best to say what it was for him, and then he lets its central cast say what it was for them too. No one here is presented as a god incarnate, just as people thrust into a unique circumstance together and trying to make sense of it apart.
The story of Jackie Robinson tends to fit into history texts as a heroic but inevitable token of progress. It wasn't so simple for the people who made it happen, and hearing how they rationalize the experience in retrospect makes it all much more human. They can still be heroes without being gods.
It's the story of burdened men and how they handle their burdens. The burden of success and subsequent feelings of inadequacy. The burden of Vietnam, a colossal conflict dwarfing their own and scooping up their sons. The burden of having overperformed and being underpaid. The burden of living in a tumultuous time and trying to explain that they lived through tumult too, that even though it looks like nothing in retrospect, it was something. It was real. Deteriorating bodies and deteriorating respect. This is a picture of transitional moments, not yet far enough removed from glories for it to be history. Just folks.
The flairs are literary and they are incisive. They are morally charged and they are nostalgic. The asides make the book because the plot doesn't matter. There are one hundred pages of plot, one hundred pages of baseball history and championships and striving. And then we see that the real lives, even the ones lived amidst that strife, were asides and flairs and intangibles.
The title is so misleading. I avoided this book for a long time because it seemed like it would merely bask in the nostalgic glow of long gone halcyon days. The Brooklyn Dodgers, that small thing uprooted and transformed into the picture of capital-centric glitz, tend to take on the hue of a baseball martyr. So I hesitated and demurred.
The title is there for a reason though. Kahn, having seen the reality of the team from the front row, knew well enough that he could value the importance of the team without making it something that it isn't. So he does his best to say what it was for him, and then he lets its central cast say what it was for them too. No one here is presented as a god incarnate, just as people thrust into a unique circumstance together and trying to make sense of it apart.
The story of Jackie Robinson tends to fit into history texts as a heroic but inevitable token of progress. It wasn't so simple for the people who made it happen, and hearing how they rationalize the experience in retrospect makes it all much more human. They can still be heroes without being gods.
It's the story of burdened men and how they handle their burdens. The burden of success and subsequent feelings of inadequacy. The burden of Vietnam, a colossal conflict dwarfing their own and scooping up their sons. The burden of having overperformed and being underpaid. The burden of living in a tumultuous time and trying to explain that they lived through tumult too, that even though it looks like nothing in retrospect, it was something. It was real. Deteriorating bodies and deteriorating respect. This is a picture of transitional moments, not yet far enough removed from glories for it to be history. Just folks.
jmaynard15's review against another edition
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75