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Summer of '49 (P.S.) |  | Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
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Seller: horizonbb
Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 67021
Media: Paperback
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1
ISBN: 0060884266
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780060884260
ASIN: 0060884266
Publication Date: May 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780060884260 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Amazon.com Review
With the airwaves saturated with so much sporting choice, it's hard to imagine how, not that long ago, baseball so completely dominated the landscape and captured imaginations. Given the 1949 season that veteran journalist David Halberstam meticulously recreates, maybe it's not so hard after all. It was a season of great public and personal drama for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, with the conflict finally resolving itself in a Yankee pennant following a head-to-head showdown on the final day of the season. Each team was led by a star of the highest magnitude: Joe DiMaggio spurred the Yankees despite missing half the season with a foot injury; Ted Williams virtually carried the Sox on his back, missing an unprecedented third Triple Crown by mere decimal points on his batting average. Halberstam focuses much of his narrative on the trials of these two individual sporting giants, adding fine supporting performances by Yogi Berra, Ellis Kinder, Dom DiMaggio, even restaurateur Toots Shoor. Both on and off the field, Halberstam beautifully captures the ethos of a more innocent game that no longer exists, played by heroes far more driven by their pride than by their salaries.
Product Description
With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam returns us to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat. The year was 1949, and a war-weary nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball's American League, and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash, headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions—one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 57
 Summer of "49 March 12, 2010
John Watson
Halberstam shares with his reader a love of major league baseball. The 1949 pennant race between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox represents the history of baseball at its exciting best. The sidebars that the author inserts into the telling of the storyline add greatly to the narrative. They always seem so germane. This book is a good read for someone who enjoys a well written story.
 Past due date November 29, 2009
Calochortus (San Luis Obispo, CA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Maybe if you were alive and following baseball then this would be interesting. I loved DH's other books on Korean War, Fifties, JFK, Media...but this was a total clunker, boring from beginning to end.
Capturing the Essense of a Bygone Era October 5, 2009
Larry Underwood (Scottsdale, AZ)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
 Disappointing September 26, 2009
Brian Brockmeyer (New York)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
The Best June 2, 2009
Oliver W. Gill (w. poland, me United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 57
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