|
|
|
Average Customer Review
Share your thoughts with other customers
|
|
|
|
|
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A poignant volume that reads like a novel., September 26, 1999
By A Customer
Mr. Kahn turns back the clock to the days when baseball was the true American pastime. His anecdotes and interviews about Mantle, Mays, and Early Wynn bring these individuals to life more than any statistics possibly could. His love of his father is written about in such a profound manner that is timeless. In all a classic piece of Americana that hopefully will be read fifty years from now.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Great man, great book, September 11, 1998
By A Customer
I was fortunate enough to receive a preview copy of this book a few weeks before its release because I was interviewing Mr. Kahn on a radio interview program. As soon as I started reading, I was hooked. Although I was not alive during the 1950's, I have always been fascinated with baseball during that era, particularly the lovable Brooklyn Dodgers. Kahn's latest book does such a wonderful job of describing what it was like to be around baseball every day in that bygone era. The easiest interview I have ever done was that one I did with Roger. His love for baseball was evident from the first question I asked him. His insight gained from covering the Dodgers in the 1950's is something every baseball fan could use. In this season of home runs, the average fan is once again starting to appreciate baseball. Roger Kahn will make you appreciate it even more.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
One of the best baseball books of the 1990s, August 27, 1997
By A Customer
So much has been written about baseball in the 1950s that it takes a special writer to offer something truly new about the subject. Kahn is such a writer. His book includes original essays on Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, essays which offer new perspectives on the two great icons of '50s baseball. And Kahn's look back on his reporting days for the New York Herald-Tribune and the young SPORTS ILLUSTRATED is the best account of the PROCESS of sportswriting yet written. Kahn poignantly recalls how baseball brought him closer to his father and, later, his mother. He closes with a list of his favorite baseball books, certain to stir Hot Stove League discussions for the next few winters. MEMORIES OF SUMMER is a splendid evocation not only of a game, but of the three-dimensional people behind it
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A Glimpse of a Past Era in Baseball, June 29, 2004
In "Memories of Summer," Roger Kahn takes the reader back to a time when the Dodgers were an integral part of the life of a Brooklynite, through his career as a writer for several different newspapers and magazines, up to modern times where he interviews former baseball stars, including Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays.Though he grew up a Dodger fan, forced to wait 'til next year seemingly forever, his love not just for the Dodgers, but for the game, is made manifest through his memoir and his reprinted articles. His painting of baseball in his earlier years as a game engulfed in wonder and mystique is shared by many who cherish old-time baseball. Kahn is not remiss in placing baseball in the context of the social realm in which it was played--a time where writers were reluctant to write about the off-the-field lives of players and where racism, which barred blacks from playing in the majors for almost 50 years, slowly gave way to integration, very slowly. He saw the Jackie Robinsons and the Willie Mays and the Monte Irvins in Major League Baseball as baseball players, not black baseball players. This book is funny at times, sad at others, but always piques interest. Kahn does an outstanding job of painting vivid images of a time when baseball truly was an art, and writing about it truly a game.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Heartfelt, informative and entertaining, June 27, 1998
Kahn has done it again. His prose, from the unique perspective of veteran baseball writer who cares about his subjects, is at once soothing and revealing. Kahn's appreciation for the history that he witnessed - and helped create - is sure to enrich any baseball fan's appreciation of the history (to say nothing of vitally important players both on and off the field) of this great game.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Evergreen, October 14, 1997
By A Customer
The most poignant scene in Kahn's remarkable book occurs about a third of the way through--in the bottom of the third inning, say. Kahn is talking baseball with his father, a college professor and an intelligent fan, a former semipro player from whom the son learned everything he knew about baseball through childhood and adolescence. But now things are different--the son, still in his early 20s, is a newspaper beat writer for the pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers. He is a rookie at his craft, but he realizes as his father talks that he already understands more about the game--from a single season spent in daily conversation with big leaguers--that any intelligent fan can from a life's long-distance observation. A torch has been passed, though not willingly, not without some struggle. A corner has been turned.Turning corners--the geometric imperative of baseball itself--is the dominant metaphor of the book: the son turns an Oedipal corner and supplants the father; the all-white game turns the corner and runs smack into Jackie Robinson; the eternally frustrating Bums turn a corner into the eternally invoked "next year"; and sportswriting turns a corner from gritty newsprint to the glossy magazines. None of the turns is made with the facility of a swift base runner rounding the bag; advances, rather, come a labored base at a time, the game and the world forced up a grudging ninety feet by the forces of history. What is--or seems, at least--effortless is the elegant flow of Kahn's prose, like Mays gliding back to snag Wertz's blast, then whirling in a single slinging motion, getting the ball back to the infield to save a run, a game, a World Series--a precious fragment of what keeps the game improbably, miraculously pure. Anyone who is fed up with wild cards and designated hitters and stadium names drawn from the stock listings must read this book. For a moment, at least--for the span of a summer afternoon, eyes asquint, the field excruciatingly green--you, like Kahn at the end, can turn one last corner and return home.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
an enjoyable look to yesteryear, July 8, 1999
By A Customer
Kahn's most recent work, _Memories of Summer_, is a very thoughtfull look to the golden years of baseball, set in the context of Kahn's childhood and career as a journalist. Simply put, it is a must-have for any serious baseball fan, cultural anthropologist, or anyone else wondering how the game used to be and the importance that it played in the lives of fans. Throughout, Kahn manages to capture, quite superbly, the romanticism of the era, focusing specifically on perhaps the very epitome of that romanticism, the bumbling bums of Brooklyn. He very adequately portrays the love affair that so many in Brooklyn had with the team, as well as give an indication of why they are remembered so reverently today. Kahn also laces his story with his interactions with baseball celebrities, including Leo Durocher, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinson. My one drawback is that Kahn occasionally gets somewhat preachy when addressing race and racial discrimination during the time. Obviously, a certain amount of preaching is in order, but in my humble opinion it goes a step too far. Otherwise, however, the narrative that Kahn weaves, beginning in his childhood (the relationship with his father and how that relates to baseball is especially noteworthy) and tracing his career in journalism through newspapers and magazines is wonderful, easy to follow, and extremely well-written. I completely agree with the earlier reviewer who commented on the issue of "turning corners" in the book, and I would add one more - expansion to the West Coast and baseball turning the corner to become a two-coast sport. The reader can't help but feel the sorrow and bitterness that is left following the move of the Dodgers to California. This is a fantastic composition, a true gem by one of America's premier sports writers. Happy reading!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Readable and Heartfelt, December 20, 2005
The flowing pen of author Roger Kahn provides readers with books of nostalgia and heart. Here he covers baseball in New York City in the bygone 1950's, his love affair with the Brooklyn Dodgers (whom he covered as reporter from 1952-1953), plus the Yankees and Giants. Readers learn a few things about Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Leo Durocher, etc. There's the author's take on baseball racism, on the slow retreat in the 1950's. Kahn also traces his upbringing and close relationship with his baseball-addicted father. The book has a definite sense of loss, due to his father's passing, the Dodgers and Giants fleeing to California, and the urban decline that has since afflicted New York and many other once-tranquil cities. This moving book is something of a follow-up to THE BOYS OF SUMMER, the author's superb look at the Brooklyn Dodgers that was published in the early 1970's (this book came out in the late 1990's).
This book doesn't quite match BOYS OF SUMMER, but it's another gem by a writer whose heart clearly belongs to baseball.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
|
|
| |
|
|
|
