Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games [Hardcover]

A. Bartlett Giamatti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1989

A philosophical musing on sports and play, this wholly inspiring and utterly charming reissue of Bart Giamatti's long-out-of-print final book, Take Time for Paradise, puts baseball in the context of American life and leisure. Giamatti begins with the conviction that our use of free time tells us something about who we are. He explores the concepts of leisure, American-style. And in baseball, the quintessential American game, he finds its ultimate expression. "Sports and leisure are our reiteration of the hunger for paradise- for freedom untrammeled." Filled with pithy truths about such resonant subjects as ritual, self-betterment, faith, home, and community, Take Time for Paradise gives us much more than just baseball. These final, eloquent thoughts of "the philosopher king of baseball" (Seattle Weekly) are a joyful, reverent celebration of the sport Giamatti loved and the country that created it.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A. Bartlett Giamatti served as commissioner of Major League
Baseball from April 1, 1989, until his death on September 1, 1989. He
had previously been the president of
the National League, starting in 1986. He was a scholar of the English
Renaissance at Yale University, a beloved professor, and later became
its youngest president.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 113 pages
• Publisher: Summit Books (December 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671691309
• ISBN-13: 978-0671691301
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,552,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless Insights and Valedictory Thoughts, May 22, 2000

By 

Lloyd A. Conway (Detroit) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (Hardcover)

A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote this book immediately prior to his unexpected death in 1989. It appeared in print posthumously. That he would pen a paen to baseball at the height of the Pete Rose scandal, as his last published work, is ironic. His prose is sublime. The slender volume is a monograph on the nature of the game of baseball. It is timeless because it is not tied to temporal events. With little alteration, the book could have been written a hundred years ago, or (I hope) a hundred years hence. The Commissioner of Baseball and former Yale Professor of Renaissance Literature explores the intellectual facination of the game. From the geometry of the diamond to the Homeric nature of the baserunner's struggle to reach home again, Giamatti's story is enlightening as well as entertaining. Insights into the nature of our society flow naturally, given that sport in general should be seen in the context of the civilization that spawns it. One that I found to be especially memorable was on the commonalities of learning that change from generation to generation. Giamatti wrote of how the rising generation would understand the world through a computer screen, even as their progenitors had seen it through books, and of the differences, both great and small, that it would make to the thought patterns of our young. All this against the literally timneless fabric of a game played without a clock. -Lloyd A. Conway

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless Insights and Valedictory Thoughts, May 22, 2000

By 

Lloyd A. Conway (Detroit) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (Hardcover)

A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote this book immediately prior to his unexpected death in 1989. It appeared in print posthumously. That he would pen a paen to baseball at the height of the Pete Rose scandal, as his last published work, is ironic. His prose is sublime. The slender volume is a monograph on the nature of the game of baseball. It is timeless because it is not tied to temporal events. With little alteration, the book could have been written a hundred years ago, or (I hope) a hundred years hence. The Commissioner of Baseball and former Yale Professor of Renaissance Literature explores the intellectual facination of the game. From the geometry of the diamond to the Homeric nature of the baserunner's struggle to reach home again, Giamatti's story is enlightening as well as entertaining. Insights into the nature of our society flow naturally, given that sport in general should be seen in the context of the civilization that spawns it. One that I found to be especially memorable was on the commonalities of learning that change from generation to generation. Giamatti wrote of how the rising generation would understand the world through a computer screen, even as their progenitors had seen it through books, and of the differences, both great and small, that it would make to the thought patterns of our young. All this against the literally timneless fabric of a game played without a clock. -Lloyd A. Conway

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lost in Translation, March 28, 2011

By 

Cujo Wilson (La Porte, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (Hardcover)

There are two kinds of people in this world, those that absolutely loved the film Lost in Translation and those that said, `What the hell did I just watch?' I myself fall into the latter camp and I couldn't help thinking about that movie while reading this book from Bart Giamatti. It sounds like something that was indeed written by the president of Yale and if it was about baseball I could barely tell. I'm sure there are those that will thoroughly enjoy this work just as those that enjoyed Lost in Translation but clearly this ode to sport was out of my league. I had more fun dissecting John Dryden in a 17th century lit class years ago than I did reading this. I would recommend Thomas Boswell's "Why Time Begins on Opening Day" or Ken Burns baseball documentary instead. I have to say the foreword and afterword by Jon Meacham and Marcus Giamatti respectively were very well written and quite moving, more of what I was expecting from the late Commissioner.