 "Capturing the Essense of a Bygone Era" | 2009-10-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3FHSO1SKHU378 |
David Halberstam's wonderful depiction of the great pennant race from 1949, as well as the psyche of the country that was undergoing tremendous change, captured the essense of a bygone era. Whether you're a fan of the game or not, this book is a compelling and highly engaging perspective of life in America; and back then, baseball---particularly New York Yankees & Boston Red Sox baseball---was at the forefront of America's interest.
Baseball was truly America's sporting passion, and players like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams exemplified that passion. In the end, DiMaggio's Yankees began a remarkable string of unparallelled World Series success . Fittingly, Halberstam wrote another great book, October 1964, which captures the events surrounding the demise of that Yankee dynasty.
The genius of David Halberstam didn't lie in his tremendous knowledge of the game of baseball; rather, it was his unique ability to use broad strokes in capturing the essense of the prevailing social climate in America; he did it extremely well in this particular book.
Quite simply, it's a classic.
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 "Disappointing" | 2009-09-26 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3QGF3WIYLJQGV |
Since its publication some 20 years ago, SUMMER OF '49 has come to be regarded as a classic work of baseball journalism. Unfortunately, that reputation is not well-deserved. Though a smooth and absorbing read, SUMMER OF '49 suffers from too many factual and stylistic flaws to be placed in the pantheon of great baseball books.
As other critical reviews have pointed out, SUMMER OF '49 is littered with factual errors. Gene Bearden never won Rookie of the Year. Mel Parnell was not a rookie in 1948. Jackie Robinson did not steal "at will" and embarrass Yogi Berra on the basepaths during the 1947 World Series (Robinson stole all of two bases in the Series, one of which came against backup catcher Sherm Lollar). The list of errors goes on...and on...and on. The mistakes are egregious, they are lazy, and they irreparably damage Halberstam's credibility. It's simply impossible to rely on anything Halberstam writes without verifying it first.
The book's other major flaw is its format: Halberstam jumps around too much. Despite its title, SUMMER OF '49 focuses surprisingly little on the actual 1949 pennant race. He glosses over months at a time with often little more than a paragraph and his constant and lengthy digressions give the book a disjointed feel. He gives only the shortest and almost idiotically shallow explanation for the Red Sox's mid-summer turnaround (good hitting teams play better in the heat!). He only mentions DiMaggio's nearly race-altering September illness in passing and never identifies what it actually was (viral pneumonia), how long it kept him out of the lineup (two weeks), or how the Yankees fared without him (6-6, losing 3 1/2 games in the standings). And he barely covers Boston's 11-game late-September winning streak that catapulted them into first place for the first time all season. But we do get entire sections on newspaper columnists, radio broadcasters, and the growth of televised baseball. The excessive attention paid to these ancillary subjects often winds up swallowing the main story. When Halberstam does eventually return to the titular pennant race from whatever tangent he ventured off on, the reader is invariably left disoriented, having forgotten where the central narrative last left off.
These serious deficiencies aside, SUMMER OF '49 is not without a few redeeming qualities. Halberstam is a gifted writer and here he does craft an entertaining narrative. Through extensive use of vignettes and anecdotes, he offers valuable insight into the key personalities on each team, bringing to life legends like DiMaggio and Williams as well as indispensable but often overlooked figures like Tommy Henrich and Ellis Kinder. He also vividly recreates the era, making the long train rides, grueling August doubleheaders, colorful nightlife, and warbled radio broadcasts seem like first-hand experiences for the reader. That is no small feat and Halberstam deserves credit for successfully capturing the essence of baseball in the postwar years, if not necessarily its truth.
SUMMER OF '49 is not an entirely worthless book, it's just a mediocre one that falls far short of its promise and inflated reputation due to factual mistakes, superficial analysis, and lack of focus. |
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| "The Best" | 2009-06-02 |
| - Reviewed By cliffgill |
| I've read many baseball books and this is one of the two or three best ever. Never mind the story of '49 which is in itself interesting, this writer brings in antidotes of these player which are pure pleasure, revealing, inciteful and fascinating. By the way, David Halberstam is also one hellava writer. A sure fire hit for any baseball lover especially those who know the player of the early fifties. |
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| "Summer of 49" | 2008-09-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1PPY7OXZ968YR |
| After reading this book you will see how great Baseball was pre 1965. The author describes perfectly the atmosphere, the players, the writers/announcers, how great the game was! |
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| "Simply put, A Great Author at his Best!!!" | 2008-08-31 |
| - Reviewed By deadsox |
The catalog of work by David Halberstam is outstanding in so many different aspects. It would seem that he is at his best when he writes about sports. While I can recommend any of his works, Summer of 49 is probably the best! Halberstam does a great job of not only painting an era but painting the giants who played in them. Williams and DiMaggio are given special care and shown to be complex and interesting characters in this drama, but then so are the role players like Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr.
This work also does a great job of painting a picture of the last gasp of an era when teams traveled by train, were mostly white and played by afternoon. His descriptions of the games themselves are almost like listening to them on television. For true baseball fans, this is a must read! |
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| "Baseball. Yankees vs. Red Sox. Halberstam. It's the Triple Crown." | 2008-08-25 |
| - Reviewed By billcap |
It would be be impossible to put the following three things together -- baseball, Yankees vs. Red Sox and David Halberstam -- and not have the result be a masterpiece. I've been a Yankee fan since I can first remember watching baseball in the mid-70s and lived for baseball and the Yankees.
I still remember attending my first World Series game in 1978 (Game 3) at Yankee Stadium after the memorable 1978 battle with the Sox. For me, the heroes were different that those of Halberstam, the times different and the game certainly changed by television -- but not yet by the internet. Halberstam vividly recreated the players of the earlier Yankee/Red Sox rivalries, the players I grew up collecting baseball cards, seeing at Old-Timers games and reading about. Halberstam could likely write a book about the most dull subject and inject it with a style and eloquence that would leave me wanting more. Put this type of material in his hands and I couldn't put it down. Certainly, the larger than life stars like Joltin Joe and Teddy Ballgame are brought to life, but the supporting cast adds so much to the remarkable pennant run of 1949. From Joe Coleman, Vic Raschi and Joe Page of the Yanks to Ellis Kinder, Mel Parnell and Birdie Tebbets of the Sox, late 40s baseball jumps off the pages. Television and air travel had yet to dramatically transform the game and Halberstam creates a sense of time and place that is often hard fathom in the year 2008. However, one also steps into this era when players truly played for the love of the game, didn't have the security of guaranteed contracts and the color barrier was finally being broken down and enabling a flood of amazing African-American talent into a heretofore segrated professional sports league.
Sure, we know the outcome. However, a measure of a great book or movie is that in spite of knowing "how the story ends", we remain captivated until the final word or the credits roll. This is what Halbertam does with the "Summer of 49" and in doing so creates a baseball classic. Even if you are not a Yankee or Red Sox fan, this book is a pure joy for any baseball fan and one interested in the history of America's pasttime. |
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