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	The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together
	"Another Time, Another Place"	2008-04-28
Michael Shapiro does a superb job not only of capturing the excitement of the Brooklyn Dodgers' last pennant-winning season but also of explaining just what the Dodgers meant to so many Brooklynites. Set against the background of the Walter O'Malley-Robert Moses negotiations that would determine the fate of the Dodgers, Shapiro provides logical proof that it was not O'Malley's intention to move the ballclub but that Moses kept making a fool of him to the point where remaining in Brooklyn would have been rather humiliating for O'Malley. Though never elected to any office, Robert Moses was the most powerful official in New York City in the late 1950s. His power was further enhanced by the fact that the Mayor at that time, Robert F. Wagner Jr. was both lazy and indifferent, and would not have gone far in politics except for the fact that his namesake father was a very popular U.S. senator. If O'Malley was going to get the land and permits to build a new ballpark, he was going to have to go through Moses and Moses couldn't have cared less as to what became of the Dodgers. O'Malley tired desperately to be taken seriously by Moses and the NYC politicians to where he even had the Dodgers play seven "home" games in Jersey City in 1956. In the end, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, not because O'Malley plotted to take them there but because L.A. politicians eagerly and actively courted O'Malley to move to their city while their New York counterparts, especially Moses, gave him the brush-off. O'Malley wanted to build a ballpark at the junction of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, where multiple subway lines and the Long Island Railroad converge. Moses at first wanted O'Malley to build a ballpark in a hard-to-reach part of Bedford-Stuyvesant and later proposed having the city build a ballpark on the site of what is now Shea Stadium. Anyone familiar with Brooklyn knows that if you're riding the subway, it's easier to get to Yankee Stadium from Brooklyn than to go out to Flushing Meadows, where Shea Stadium is. In any case Los Angeles made O'malley an offer he couldn't refuse--300 acres in the heart of the city, where multiple freeways converge. New York officials made no effort to compete as Brooklyn didn't count for much in their eyes. When the Mets were created a few years later there was no question in their minds that they should represent New York and use the orange "NY" logo formerly used by the New York Giants, rather than the Brooklyn Dodgers' "B." 50 years have now passed since the Dodgers moved, and Walter O'Malley has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The ballpark he built and paid for (which opened in 1962) remains one of the most beautiful and popular in major league baseball. Shea Stadium, on the other hand, built by Robert Moses with taxpayers' money and opened in 1964, will soon be torn down. What is more, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner is currently trying to arrange to move his NBA basketball team to that same junction in Brooklyn that O'Malley originally wanted. Michael Shapiro is an excellent writer and his book is highly recommended!
	Nothing Sacred : The Truth About Judaism
	"Amazing!"	2008-01-24
This book is truly amazing in that someone so ignorant of his subject could actually find someone to publish a book purporting to explain Judaism. By his very title, the author declares Judaism to be a religion in which nothing is sacred. Nothing can be further from the truth. In the Torah, upon which Judaism is based, Israel is commanded to be "a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. In Judaism, EVERYTHING is sacred--from our personal, private behavior to how we treat others and even animals for that matter. We are forbidden to cause needless pain to any living creature. We are even forbidden to curse the deaf, who cannot hear us. The Hebrew bible teaches that God is the source of absolute truth, yet to people like Rushkoff, there is no such thing as absolute truth. Yet if there is no absolute truth, there is no God, and if there is no God, then why bother with any religion, including Judaism (and including Rushkoff's book)? Rushkoff's idea of religion appears to be a kind of spiritual anarchy where each person creates their own religion for no other purpose than to make them feel good. There is no absolute right and wrong, no good or evil. What this book claims is that Judaism in nothing but a jumble of chaotic beliefs and ideas, when in fact no religion has striven harder than Judaism to define right and wrong, good and evil. When it comes to real Judaism, this book is nihilistic in nature. Anyone wishing to understand real Judaim would do much better to start with Basic Judaism by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (an Orthodox rabbi), What is a Jew by Rabbi Morris Kertzer (a reform Rabbi), and Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.
	Nothing Sacred : The Truth About Judaism
	"Amazing!"	2008-01-24
This book is truly amazing in that someone so ignorant of his subject could actually find someone to publish a book purporting to explain Judaism. By his very title, the author declares Judaism to be a religion in which nothing is sacred. Nothing can be further from the truth. In the Torah, upon which Judaism is based, Israel is commanded to be "a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. In Judaism, EVERYTHING is sacred--from our personal, private behavior to how we treat others and even animals for that matter. We are forbidden to cause needless pain to any living creature. We are even forbidden to curse the deaf, who cannot hear us. The Hebrew bible teaches that God is the source of absolute truth, yet to people like Rushkoff, there is no such thing as absolute truth. Yet if there is no absolute truth, there is no God, and if there is no God, then why bother with any religion, including Judaism (and including Rushkoff's book)? Rushkoff's idea of religion appears to be a kind of spiritual anarchy where each person creates their own religion for no other purpose than to make them feel good. There is no absolute right and wrong, no good or evil. What this book claims is that Judaism in nothing but a jumble of chaotic beliefs and ideas, when in fact no religion has striven harder than Judaism to define right and wrong, good and evil. When it comes to real Judaism, this book is nihilistic in nature. Anyone wishing to understand real Judaim would do much better to start with Basic Judaism by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (an Orthodox rabbi), What is a Jew by Rabbi Morris Kertzer (a reform Rabbi), and Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.
	Some Writers Deserve to Starve: 31 Brutal Truths about the Publishing Industry
	"Useful, But Contains One Major Error"	2006-12-04
While this book contains useful information, there is one glaring error writers need to be aware of. Ms. Niles says that once you've had a project rejected by an editor at one of the six major conglomerate publishing houses, "That rejection is on file with all the companies under the conglomerate's roof." That is generally not so. The "companies under the conglomerate's roof," known as imprints, each function separately and a submission to one imprint generally does not have an effect on how the others might react. Don't believe me? Ask an agent. The overall reasoning in the book comes across as sound. Unfortunately many writers do starve, not because of a lack of talent but due to the iron law of supply and demand. There is far, far too much of a supply of written material compared to the demand for it. Very few people are frequent book buyers. Some may buy a book occasionally. Unfortunately most Americans never darken the door of a bookstore or purchase books in any other way. The odds in the writing business are just plain tough and writers need to find creative ways to beat them.
	Hope and Honor
	"Makes you proud to be an American"	2006-11-21
This is an extraordinary story of strength, courage and love under the most trying conditions imaginable. After surviving the Holocaust as a boy in Nazi-controlled Lithuania, Sidney Shachnow eventually emigrated to the U.S. with his family to start a new life. Risking his life in defense of freedom as a career soldier he truly gave back so much to his new homeland. As such Gen Shachnow's story serves to remind us of the real meaning of American patriotism, which, sadly, in not taught in schools the way it formerly was. This book makes an equally valuable contribution to American literature as Gen. Shachnow made to the U.S. Army. Unlike so many celebrity autobiographies, which are little more than self-agrandizing fluff-fluff, this book presents the story of Gen Shachnow's life in a painfully honest manner. From cover to cover it is the forthright story of a real man and a real human being, warts and all. That Gen. Shachnow has no trouble being as open as he is with his readers further attests to his bravery and character.
	Another Time Another Place
	"A walk down memory lane"	2006-03-15
For anyone who lived in or near Brooklyn's Brownsville section at any time prior to the early 1960s, this book is sheer nostalgia. By having interviewed a substantial number of people (many of whom now live in Florida), the authors do an outstanding job of conveying the flavor of "the old neighborhood" in days gone by. At the end of the book there's a series of interviews with Brownsville celebrities, that is people who went on to become nationally famous, including Steve Lawrence and "Grandpa Munster" Al Lewis. The authors clearly convey a picture of Brownsville in its heyday as a nuturing neighborhood and the experience of having grown up there as not at all unlike my vision of small-town America--a place where people knew and cared about one another. Perhaps small-town America is still like that. However, one would be hard presssed to find an urban neighborhood that could be called nurturing anywhere in America today. I only wish the authors had told us more about the history of Brownsville all the way up to the present time and why the neighborhood changed so drastically, but perhaps that was beyond their purpose. Still one can't help but wonder what became of the elderly people who had lived there all or most of their lives and were "left behind" through no fault of their own when the area turned into a crime-ridden slum.
	Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto
	"Intersting, thoughtful and highly accurate"	2006-02-25
As someone who lived not far from Brownsville in the 1950s and early '60s, I can say this is an exceptionally accurate book. It is well-written and is the best attempt I've seen yet at explaining the phenomenon of the changing urban neighborhood. Not only does Pritchett provide many well-reserached, well-thought-out answers but, just as important, he raises insightful, penetrating questions. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American urban history, particularly as it relates to New York City.
	The Dodgers Move West
	"Highly objective and wothwhile"	2005-08-29
I was a sad 10-year-old Brooklyn kid when I learned the dodgers were going to leave us. Like most everyone around, I tended to blame Walter O'Malley's greed. Yet in the end it may have been O'Malley's vanity more than his greed that was most responsible for the fateful decision. As Neil Sullivan so well points out, a strong case can be made that O'Malley didn't really want to leave at first. If he just wanted to take off, he would not have had the Dodgers play some of their home games in Jersey City. That had to be nothing more than an attempt to get the indifferent New York politicos to take him more seriously. In addition, O'Malley's family roots were all in New York. O'Malley wanted to build a ballpark at the junction of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, an ideal location as many subway lines converged there as well as the Long Island Railroad. O'Malley, in other words, believed in public transportation that would make it easy for the average working person to get to the ballpark. Robert Moses, who blocked O'Malley's path at every opportunity was determined to get the Dodgers out of urban Brooklyn and into what was then semi-suburban Queens. Moses hated the subway system and loved the automobile. It was he who insisted on building the Cross-Bronx Expressway, which tore the heart out of certain neighborhoods in that borough and today is both a bottleneck and an eyesore. Anything to accommodate suburbanites at the expense of the working stiffs. Moses claimeed that putting a ballpark at Flatbush and Atlantic would have caused many thriving businesses to relocate. In fact the Flatbush-Atlantic junction rapidly deteriorated and most of those thriving businesses went under on their own. The bottom line was that the unelected Parks Commissioner Moses considered himself the czar of all recreation in New York and was not about to let anyone build a ballpark anywhere except where he (Moses) wanted it. In fact what O'Malley proposed was an urban renewal project that was none of the Parks Commissioner's business. But New York's mayor at the time, Robert F. Wagner had the backbone of a jellyfish and was not about to stand up to Moses. O'Malley, who had invested considerable time and effort on the Flatbush-Atlantic site, finally got tired of being strung along and had no desire to become Moses' tenant and underling in Queens. He saw an opportunity in L.A. and took it. And so today we have ugly Shea Stadium, neo-Stalinist in design, named for a politico, and built under the aegis of Moses, far more unattractive than O'Malley's Dodger Stadium. People can't wait for Shea Stadium to be torn down and replaced by a building with some charm, while O'Malley's beautiful ballpark wil last indefinitely into the future. Neil Sullivan's book is an excellent read and highly recommended.