Iowa Books

David Lynn, editor of the Kenyon Review, has followed up his previous publications, a short story collection and a book of literary criticism, with a stunning novel. He employs a slight trick and does so masterfully to force his readers to think about how they view the world in terms of racism, class and morality, while enjoying a page turner of a novel.

The story is told from the point of view of Baltimore reporter, Jason Currant. He is a Viet Nam veteran who is recently divorced. His ex-brother in law has been accused of rape in a small Iowa town and he is asked by his ex-in laws to look into it.

Gabriel Salter, the ex-brother in law is an idealist and a working member of the International Socialist Alliance. He has worked in some of the worst conditions imaginable in order to get the word out that the common worker and illegal immigrant is getting screwed on a regular basis. He has been accused of raping the daughter of a Black, truck owner/driver who doesn't have the greatest reputation in town.

The two sides have completely irreconcilable stories in regards to the events of the evening. The police have Salter as a low level drug dealer in the neighborhood to collect on a debt. The ISA has Gabriel set up because of his rabble rousing ways, including a recent protest over the raid and arresting of many illegal immigrants working at the meat packing company he works at. They claim a woman accosted him and told him her boyfriend was dangerous and asking if he would take her home? Upon arriving, she disappeared into the home, and as she wandered through the home, the police appeared behind Gabriel and pulled his pants down and arrested him.

The slight trick that Lynn uses is offering two different prologues, one for each of the two sides. Throughout the remaining reading of the book, the reader will choose one of those two views as the one to believe as Lynn has set them so far apart that finding a middle ground is not possible. He set the prosecution view up first and then offers a second prologue titled, "Another Story," giving the ISA view.

Throughout my reading, as Currant investigates, talks to people, and builds up both sides of the case at the same time, I had to constantly question myself - did I think what I did because of Lynn's ordering of the prologues? Because of the race of the participants in the events? Because of the politics of those involved?

Currant is not only investigating the story of Gabriel Salter, but wrestling with himself as well. He is trying to piece together a history of his family and that of the Salters, coming to conclusions that would be shocking, and not just surprising, if Lynn didn't do such a good job of foreshadowing them. Lynn reminds us just how simple it is to hide from one's view what is going on around us when we don't want to know - Currant is a reporter, trained to observe and investigate yet he is the one most surprised by the revelations he discovers about his youth, and his family.

As the mystery of the rape is the one that is being written about front and center, with Lynn's format, it is not the one that is going to be most easily solved. That lifts this book above the level of a standard mystery and puts it in a special class. Lynn has delivered a page turner that is as thought provoking as any book I've read this year - I believe I have learned as much about myself through my reading of "Wrestling with Gabriel," as I did of the characters.

A legend in his own time at The University of Texas, Martin "Red" Gibson transfers his magical teaching ability into an effective and easy-to-read book with "The Writer's Friend." Written in a breezy, almost conversational style, TWF is design ed to teach you copy editing painlessly. Through his subtle Texas humor, brilliantly clear examples and common-sense approach, you will begin to think about what you and others write. TWF helped me not only as a journalist, but as a writer in day-to-day life. I know the people who read what I write appreciate the book, and I know that I sure do appreciate Dr. Gibson -- and miss him. Get this book if you want to write well.

WRITING THE TRAIL: FIVE WOMEN'S FRONTIER NARRATIVES is for any collection strong in either women's studies or early American history. It gathers together the journeys and very different experiences of five early frontier women, and come from as diverse a sector as a teen bride and 'wandering princess' on the Santa Fe Trail to life in California's mining camps. Quotes from letters, journals and source materials are supplemented by historical and cultural reflections suitable for college-level study.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

What an enjoyable read. Brought back all the wonderful memories of childhood along with an adult slant about the world today. Every chapter a treat.

As a kid growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s, I totally related to Bill Bryson's recounting of his childhood in Iowa. He did all sorts of stuff kids today would never get away with - their mothers would be horrified. Of course, much of his recollections are exaggerated, but not so much so that they don't ring true to those who grew up in that post WWII era.

Bryson's knack for creatively recounting minor incidents from his life - like working on a scab for months, until it was 1 1/2 inches thick and you could stick a thumbtack in it and not feel a thing - had me laughing out loud again and again. His imagination turns a day at the beach, or dinner and a movie with his mom, into one hilarious event after another. His was an era where getting stitches more than once was not only common but a measurement of bravery...or guts.

I highly recommend this entertaining, feel-good, laugh-till-you-cry (complete with tears) experience, a baby boomer's delight and worthy of your time.
50 Ways to Leave Your Mother

Lots of great research (At least I can't remember that many details of my childhood from the same time period.) Not as good as the raving reviews but interesting and easy reading.

50's nostalgia has been done over and over, but Bill Bryson hits a home run with this reminiscence of his childhood years in Des Moines, Iowa. Despite the efforts of modern novelists and Hollywood to cast a dark shadow over the decade of the 50's, it does truly seem like it was the best of times after reading this book.

Being a "late boomer", born almost a decade after Bryson, I grew up with some remnants of this world myself, and I can personally vouch for the mayhem inside those movie theatres that showed Saturday matinees for the kids. If there's one chapter that made me laugh out loud it was the one entitled "Out and About". The theatres, the amusement park, the restaurants, the Iowa State Fair, hanging around a downtown full of stores, all of these places had stories which Bryson delights in sharing with us.

The author describes Iowa as an idyllic place; smack dab in the middle of the country, with deep topsoil, huge stalks of corn, and frugal yet welcoming people who didn't worry too much about things they couldn't control. The world was a much bigger place then, and food items which seem pretty basic to us, such as "pasta, rice, cream cheese, sour cream, garlic, mayonnaise, onions.." etc. were somewhat exotic and to be viewed with suspicion back then.

Those of us who have received a much circulated e-mail about how things were different in our childhood, how we could be outside at all hours of the day and didn't flinch at the cuts and scrapes we acquired on a daily basis, will get more reminding by reading this book. Even childhood mischief is portrayed somewhat benignly as Bryson looks through the haze of nostalgia; chemistry sets setting houses on fire, petty thefts of beer and candy, and dangerous practices like hanging off the back of tailgates of moving cars. Not to mention the threat of the polio epidemic of the time, one wonders in today's age of over-supervised kids how we ever survived our own 50's and 60's childhoods.

Bryson looks at the 50's in the greater world as well, sometimes in a way that works, sometimes not. Bryson is at his best when talking about phenomena like comic books and TV becoming so big, and about publications of all kinds predicting various Doomsday scenarios (much like today actually). The chapter on the Red Scare doesn't fit too well into this book though, a bit of liberal preachiness creeps in that seems out of place here.

There are parts where it seems as if Bryson might be trying too hard to amuse us, but overall I enjoyed this book very much. His affection for his sportswriter father and absent-minded yet cheery mother are quite heartwarming. The chapter about his rural grandparent's home was drawn very nicely as well. Bryson does the inevitable comparison between the Des Moines of his childhood and today and sees all that was lost, never to return. Was the world a better place back then? Bryson implies strongly that it was, and I won't disagree.

For those fans of Bryson's books, or for those who are drawn to nostalgic remembrances, you will enjoy this.

I have read several of Bryson's books, the most recent being his able essay on Shakespeare, but this one I found almost disturbing. The book is supposedly about growing up in Des Moines (Bryson was born in 1951) and part of the book is about that. But lots is not. There are hypercritical and one sided rants on US policy in the Cold War, on the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950's and a number of other aspects of life in the 1950's of which Bryson disapproves. Now some of these things are pretty soft targets and deserve some measure of abuse, but the rants are not relating the experience of the very young boy who experienced the times. They are the views of an adult evaluating the times and an angry adult at that.

Some of the parts that are about growing up in Des Moines are fairly funny, but they are just as frequently nasty and are often fueled by anger as well. Bryson is thoroughly unkind to many of the people that he describes in the book. The funny parts were not enough to me to counterbalance the nasty. Overall the book reeks of an arrogant superiority that I have not found in other Bryson books. His other books did not seem to me to be mean spirited. This one does.

There seems to be a consensus among PKD fans that Ubik is the best place to start if you are new to the author's work. Its quick pace, wit, and spectacular imagery make for a highly entertaining read. Also, it touches on some of the major themes that recur in Dick's novels. This was the first PKD book I ever read and it got me off to a great start.

Time magazine called Ubik "one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present." And Dick's website reported in May that Celluloid Dreams has optioned the film rights to this masterpiece. Did you love Blade Runner? That was originally a PKD book. Minority Report? Another outstanding work by PKD. Ubik is slated to be the next in line to make it to the big screen. Be sure to read the book before you see the movie.

In this futuristic sci-fi tale of life and death and cold-sleep, Glen Runciter (with the counsel of his quick-frozen wife Ella) runs a company that supplies `inertials', people whose proximity suppresses the psychic powers of others, ensuring their clients' right to privacy in a world where telepaths and pre-cognitives can too easily violate it. After Runciter is murdered, Joe Chip (the best tester in the business) and his counter-psionic companions struggle to survive in a world where time seems to have drifted backwards and death is striking out of nowhere. Is their dreaded nemesis the telepath Hollis trying to destroy them? Or is Joe's beautiful and dangerous wife Pat behind it all? Or could there be some still darker force at work? Their only hope lies with the fragmentary messages they receive from the absent Runciter, and the promise of the all-pervasive but ever-elusive product known as `Ubik'.

As the above summary may suggest, this is not your usual sci-fi adventure, even granting that it's from the inventive mind of Philip K. Dick. Not atypically, this book is crazy, dark, explosive, suspenseful, and yet still manages to be very funny. After the frantic pace of the first few dozen pages, the second half of this novel may seem to drag a bit, but the book is short enough that most readers will simply race through Dick's unpretentious prose until they get to the stunning conclusion, which, as always, will not please everyone. But then, life doesn't always come doled out in neat little (spray-can) packages.

Ubik presents an interesting twist on psychics in the future. They not only exist, but they are highly organized and aggressive. At the same time, there are individuals known as inertials who have the ability to counteract both telepaths and precogs. The intertials are also organized and most work for "prudence organizations" that hire out to counteract spy work that the psychics undertake and the conflicts can escalate to lethal levels. The story hits a major turning point when the largest prudence organization takes on a job that sends 12 people into a trap that literally explodes in their faces. In the aftermath, reality starts to unravel and the group of inertials races against time to put things right before it's too late.

This book sets up an interesting scenario of espionage and counter-espionage with various types of psychic phenomena as the tools of the trade. Some aspects of the world are set up with a very clear logic that largely stays consistent throughout the story. Other elements aren't defined as well, and some seem to shift a bit depending on where we are in the story.

Characterization is also a bit of a mixed bag. The owner of the company seems larger than life, and one of his aides is pretty well fleshed out in an interesting way. Unfortunately, the remaining cast is pretty sketchy and doesn't get much attention. This lack of depth includes a prime suspect for the cause of their troubles, which was a lost opportunity.

Overall, I liked Ubik and found it interesting, but couldn't help feeling that it could have been even stronger still. I would have liked another 50 pages or so to flesh out the characters and add more personal drama. As others have pointed out, there are also plot developments that appear to contradict what has already happened in the story and a better job could have been done to edit these out or explain them. Ubik is still worth reading, but feels more like a missed opportunity than a treasured classic.

If you're new to Philip K. Dick, then I can't recommend UBIK as a place to get to know him. Start with one of his inventive SciFi operas (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch), his psychological conundrums (Confessions of a Crap Artist or A SCANNER DARKLY), his cold-war farces (The Zap Gun or The Simulacrum), or any of his fun short story collections.

If you're familiar with Dick, you'll find that UBIK displays all of his hallmarks. 1) A what-if concept that is too simple for any other author to invent: in this case a corp of anti-psi characters who are in high demand because their ultra-mundane presence blocks psychic interference. 2) Hapless male protagonists controlled by feminine mystique. 3) Thurber-style humor, such as talking coin-op household appliances. And 4) exploration of the borderline personality. In this case, the borderline personality takes over the book as each character fades to a figment of another's imagination and reality itself is revealed to be the product of a spray can.

As a general rule, I read very little science fiction. And, when I do, I like for it to be short and not too intricately detailed about the science aspects. That's me.

Since this was so highly rated by Time Magazine, I gave it a try. I was amazed to discover that this book complies with both of my requests of science fiction. Additionally, it merges Asimov with Raymond Chandler. "Ubik" is a whodunit, with concepts of psi powers and lunar travel and videophones. . . . to solve a murder (or are there murders?). The key science fiction element is the "half life" - a state where the deceased somehow are hooked to machines which allow them to communicate with the living while their bodies lay dormant in a conservatory. Sound a bit like "Matrix" or how about "Minority Report?"

We work in and out of this half life concept, and the same becomes confoundedly confusing when it appears that one of the paranormal's psi powers can control the world about the half life by changing time and all around us. Mind over matter. All that matters is in the mind. If you love the volley between mind and reality, also reach for Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel."

"Ubik" should be made into a film, especially as author Dick complied by finalizing a screenplay before his early death. But, alas his manuscript is not on celluloid. But, his ideas are - as reflected by the movies recited above - and some accuse the "13th Floor" to be a ripoff of Dick's "half life" concept which arouses your imagination in "Ubik".

Finally, like so much literature of the 1960's, the ending is a great twist. It throws you off balance. It truly is an ending which Rod Serling would have loved.

It would be a mistake to read this book through the lens of nostalgia. Certainly the childhood Kalish describes is very appealing, particularly her commentaries on how her family fostered thrift and independence. It's always tempting to think that the past is somehow a better place. However few of us, I suspect, would wish to return to a time when a failed marriage could mark a woman for life (and Kalish is clear about the effect of this on her mother) or when one measure of a woman's worth was the degree of shine on her windowpanes (and Kalish is clear about her disdain for that particular preoccupation). It's also important to remember that this memoir is just one view of the Depression years; Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), which is based on his firsthand observations of California migrants, tells a very different story. I'm a teacher, and I read this book with a group of high school seniors, for whom the book was a revelation, particularly in its descriptions of how little Kalish's family relied on purchased goods and how much she and her siblings relied on imagination, not expensive sports equipment, in creating their own fun. For them (and for me) the book is interesting not because it evokes a better time and place but because it suggests that life on a Depression-era Iowa farm might teach us a few things relevant to our present circumstances, economic ones included.

I read aloud so many parts of this great book to my husband that he just had to read the whole thing for himself - brought back many, many memories - funny how hard times can be remembered so favorably! We highly recommend anyone reading "Little Heathens" who grew up on a farm, in the country or in a small town, or wish they had. Kudos to the author!!

This is like listening to your grandma (or that old lady in the Titanic movie) telling in a gentle, slow-cadenced voice, about the "old days." Among the topics covered: thrift, medicine, chores, farm food, gathering food, and wash day. The book starts off mildly entertaining, but just like grandma (or grandpa), it gets long-winded. You start to feel bored and restless and wonder how much more you can sit through before you make the move for your coat. You might decide that the next time she repeats, "waste not, want not," you'll excuse yourself and head for the door. But if you stick with this book through the dragging middle, you get to the best parts, the chapters called "animal tales," "racoons and other critters," and "me." She tells how the kids in the family tamed racoons (the racoons slept in bed with them!) The middle part drags in part because of obsolete practices that she describes. It's hard to picture what she's talking about when she tells of the oat shocking procedure, the mechanics of their laundry routine, and the windmill. Parts of these sections read like how-to manuals, including how to propare various meals. Her chapter called "me" is the best, as it has the most human interest, telling a little bit about how she went to college, joined the coast guard, got married, etc. What is ridiculous is that she puts this chapter as an epilogue! Like she's so modest, she can't have a place in the book, it has to be tagged at the end? Like, here's a tiny bit about little ol' me if you care to know...Yeah, thanks, that's why I picked up this book in the first place!

Certainly not an earth shaking book, but interesting and fun. After I read it for a book club, I bought this copy for my mother, who is the same generation and spent a great deal of time being raised by her older sister and brother in law on their farm in Illinois. She loved it.

I grew up on a farm in southern Idaho, homesteaded by my grandparents in 1903, The stories are very@simular to the way@we lived, but with the addition of electrcity, I think I shall write a book. But most of all I am reading it om m y Kindle| Marilyn Dakan. Ruidoso, NM

This is Bryson at his best, funny, fearless, and factual. He took me back to splendid promise of the 50's when we awaited "Better things through chemistry" and believed they would come.

I really enjoyed this book, remembering the 50s. Brought back some fond memories. We chose this book for our book Club, and will discuss it tomorow. It was an easy read.

Bryson is well-known for his travelogues but here he takes us through his growing up years. All things mundane related to childhood turn interesting and are set aglow when touched by his genial wit. Bryson's companionable style is evident in this very entertaining memoir which is also a tribute to a much safer, much more innocent, and much more personable lifestyle of 1950s America. At times warm, at times wise, at times nostalgic, and always funny, this is a heart-warming chronicle of childhood by a gifted humourist which brings back cherished memories of our own.

If you spent any time in the 50's this will be a laugh out loud perspective that will not disappoint. Bryson is smart, funny and just has a gift for narrative.
The humor may be more appealing to males but I am not really sure.
Enjoy this treat.

It's a historical text book wrapped in a delightful tale of a "regular" kid from the 1950s. And I will say, funny, funny, funny. I was reading it on an airplane and I was laughing out loud almost to the point of my embarrassment. Bryson is very sharp. He supplements his childhood anecdotes with (sometimes shocking) historical facts. He successfully juxtaposes the good and the bad. Every time I turned the page, I wished America could return to a "simpler" time and then I'd turn another page and count my blessings that we have moved on. It made me long for the smell of grammar school coat closets and thank goodness we weren't all blown to pieces with a nuclear holocaust.

If you like TV, toys, kids, adults, baseball, movies, state fairs, underage drinking, family vacations, teenage pranks or anything relating to history at all, I would recommend this book as a must read.

By now, most anyone who doesn't live under a rock has likely seen the film based on this book. The cast was great, the performances wonderful, (DiCaprio should have won the Oscar for this. Who didn't think, even briefly, how the director "got that boy to do those things?" Admit it!) and ultimately, we feel good about the ending in an uneasy Euro-flick sort of way. If you grew up in a small town, Endora is Your Town and Gilbert Grape is Someone You Knew. Do yourself a favor and read the book, but don't expect a feel-good read. Expect a window into the mind of an understandably jaded young man trying to make it through.

What the film can't deal with, really, is the broad scope and study of the characters. The book is darker than the movie, a sort of comedy bouncing along with discordant background music. It's funny and it's not, much like growing up in the dying Endora that Hedges describes. Anyone with a similar experience of Smalltown, USA will just nod, smile, and keep right on reading because the matter-of-fact narrative hits home page after page. The characters get peeled open for us, especially Gilbert, as he is the narrator. Mama Grape is less a tragic feel-so-sorry-for-her figure and more the self-absorbed, pitious shadow that looms over this family. Gilbert also has more darkness in him than Johnny Depp was given room to convey in the film, although he did a fantastic job piquing our interest.

What really is eating Gilbert Grape? Read this book and find out how the future doesn't immediately occur to someone whose present appears to be a prison.

The characters in What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges are gritty and flawed and repulsive and totally engaging as well as entirely believable. It's a great study of a young man seeking meaning for his life and trying to decide when he can put his own needs before the needs of a very dysfunctional family.

Gilbert's day-to-day life in small-town Iowa is mind-numbingly realistic, and you can understand both his frustrations at the life he's living and the limitations that keep him living it. As long as he doesn't think too much about his situation or analyze his prospects for the future, life can go on as before.

But when a girl who is very different from anyone else Gilbert knows arrives on the scene, he begins to question everything. This is a great book to read in a mother-daughter book club of girls in 11th grade up or an adult book club and then to watch the movie. Comparing and contrasting the two is very interesting, particularly since author Peter Hedges also wrote the screenplay.

and the ending was so amazing that I don't know why they changed it in the movie. One of my favorite fiction books of all time! The book is sooooooooo much better than the movie.

"What's Eating Gilbert Grape" by Peter Hedges has long been popular with my peers while we were attending high school in the late 1990's. For some inexplicable reason, this book slipped by me in those years. Recently, though, a number of parents in the community of Carroll, Iowa (pop. ~10,000) declared the book 'inappropiate' mostly due to the sexual references in the book. With all the sudden publicity, my natural reaction was to read it for myself (many persons around me followed suit.)

Upon reading the novel, I finally discovered why this book connected with the rural youth that I grew up with. The characters in the book are easy to relate to: there are devout Christians with makeup caked on their faces, adulterers, handicapped persons that garner the sympathy of everyone, underage women that the men fantasize over, small business owners facing encroachment by corporate America, and the native who got out of town and thus became a smashing success. The hero, Gilbert Grape, desperately wants to leave his seemingly boring small town of Endora, Iowa, just as so many small-town kids dream of doing. Overall, it is funny and dark but a great coming of age story.

The passages that caused the great controversy in my own hometown were over-exaggerated. There are references to oral sex, masturbation, adultery, and promiscuity in the book; but these make the character seem more tangible and pale in the overall plot and message of the book. Many parents that deemed the book unfit for their teens admitted that they read only select lines. However, those who have read the whole book tend to look beyond those few lines and agree that Hedges' novel is a work of literature with a valuable message, and I could not agree more.

I read this book years ago -- it literally jumped off the book shelf at the library and landed on my foot and I thought, WOW! THIS LOOKS LIKE A GOOD BOOK ~~~~~~~~~ !!!!!!!!

GOOD is not a GOOD enough word for this book. Having read this epic wonder in 1992, here I am, 14 years later, still thinking of it. That, in itself, should speak for itself!!! READ THIS BOOK.

This is a wonderful story line, plot, cast of characters. They tear your heart out. Have kleenex handy as you will need them. Be prepared to laugh out loud also. Mr. Hedges is a superb author with insight into the human soul.

As most of you know, this was made into a movie starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo C. Leonardo was nominated for the OSCAR for his role. The movie follows the book to a tee. I would suggest reading the book first if you have not by chance seen the movie. However -- even if you have seen the movie and LOVED it, treat yourself and read the book. Books are ALWAYS better.

I have recommended this book to all of my friends and family over the last 14 years. The more people who read this, the better. There is no age limit, this can be enjoyed by nearly every age group and gender. It is just soooooooooooo good!!!!

READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!! You will not be sorry.

Thanks -- Pam

I had heard about this book for years, and finally got around to reading it recently. I was immediately turned off when Kahn was describing the influences in his household in New York--most notably Karl Marx. What is it with these people and their love for Marxism? Marxist governments have been responsible for over 100 million deaths worldwide, and yet to this day there are those who gush about how wonderful it is. These people are more than idealists, they are dangerous morons. Since I am not a political neophyte, the mention of Marx disgusted me and detracted from an otherwise good book. Isn't it ironic that if Kahn was living in his Utopian Marxist society, he wouldn't have made the fortune on this book that he made under capitalism?

How often do you read a book that you don't want to end? "The Boys of Summer" is one of them.

How often do you read a book at exactly the right time in your life, at a time when you are the most in tune with what the book is really about? For me, "The Boys of Summer" and I have met at just the right time.

It's not like I've been unaware of this book. Being a baseball fan, it's presence is just about as constant as it could ever be. As a lifelong New York Yankees fan, "The Boys of Summer" has always been "that old book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, who the heck cares?" Well, score that a two base error.

Waking up to the realities and disappointments of middle age is not all that much fun, nor is it frequently reckoned on it's own terms with necessary insight. It's usually a lot easier to go to sleep, get up, go to work, and watch those ballgames nearly every day. Now that's something to hold onto. The daily cacophony of two children is a great distraction, particularly if one is happy to be distracted.

But what of the inevitable changes wrought by the inexorable march of time? How long should one dwell on realizing that not only are you as old as the ballplayers you watch on TV, but that it was twenty-five years since you realized it? When in the world did our favorite players become coaches and hall of fame candidates, to be seen only at old timers days? Am I an old timer now? What...???

"The Boys of Summer" does us a great and timely favor. It's a powerful reminder. It's a gentle and insistent reflection of ourselves and what our lives have done to us, and where we find ourselves now. What have we lost along the way? What have we gained?

The game of baseball has long endured. It is both unchanging and ever changing. It can be a great distraction. Author Roger Kahn shows how it can teach as well.

Baseball is youth. Enthusiastic, ebullient, exciting, entrancing. Baseball will always retain it's youth. as that is it's nature. But not us. Youth passes and passes away, as it must. Life goes on. We must make do, and my oh my, isn't that a bit sad?

I wasn't around for the Golden Age of Baseball, the 1950's in New York with the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants fighting for supremacy in New York, although the team from the Bronx seemed to mostly come out on top. "The Boys of Summer" is wonderfully evocative of that era, and I really appreciate the human dimension that Kahn so ably weaves into the book. The old ballplayers really come alive in full color, and of course black and white. Who cares about the Brooklyn Dodgers? Well, bless my soul, now I do!

I look forward to when my two young children are old enough to watch baseball with me. I miss talking baseball with my now dead father.

Holy cow.

The reason I gave this book five stars is because I'm not allowed to give it six. This is simply the best baseball book I've ever read, and that's a fairly long list. I can't say enough positive things about this book.

It should be noted that I was a sports writer for 8 years and was early in my career when I read this book. I was enthralled by the first part of the book, which not only provided insight into two prototypical Brooklyn Dodgers seasons (great team, fell short of winning a championship), but it also took me into the fascinating world of journalism in the 1950s. It was exciting and eye-opening.

The second part of the book includes stories of Kahn visiting players from those teams many years later. You can't believe how interesting this is. The story of Billy Cox is touching. The story of Duke Snider offers great insight into the superstar outfielder. Roy Campanella's story is tragic. I've read three or four books by Kahn and all are good, but this is at an entirely different level. Someday I will read this book again when it's been long enough so that it can feel like I'm reading it for the first time.

Certainly, this book does not need another adoring review from a nostalgic fan who never saw the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers play. It is universally regarded as a classic in its field. I am an avid baseball fan who devours baseball books yet, amazingly, I never read it. I always thought that this was little more than a fan's love letter to his favorite team, a perennial also-ran who couldn't get past the mighty Yankees. It is not. This book is so much more than that: it is a document of an era and a reflection upon that era and the ways that our society changed during the 15 or so subsequent years.

In ways perhaps unique in baseball literature, Roger Kahn manages to bring alive the feeling of the era. In a poignant poetic style, Kahn describes growing up as a Dodger fan, and the trials and tribulations of the 1952-53 Dodgers, as viewed from the perspective of a fan and a young news writer. Much of it is cast in a rosy glow; yet all the attendant ugliness of the era is neither ignored nor dismissed. It seems somewhat diminished however, as bad things typically happened to other people. The most touching moments are Kahn's personal moments, be they with his family or his team.

The second part of the book, in which years later, Kahn seeks out the members of his team, takes the narrative to a much higher plane. Not merely asking the aging idols to nostalgically remember "the good old days", he instead prods greater reflection from the men. As aging athletes, they all had to come to terms with their mortality in ways that the rest of us do not, and at an age that the rest of us do not. Most of us do not start really feeling our age until our children are grown, and our careers are winding down, and we are facing retirement. Athletes reach that point in life far earlier than the rest of us. While a man (or woman) working, say in the insurance industry, will continue to grow and become more capable throughout their working career, an athlete must change careers, if he is lucky, in his late 30's.

This particular group of athletes was remarkable for another reason. They played alongside Jackie Robinson, and thus desegregated major league baseball, and thereby, personified a great deal of hope for a great many men and women. Hope that not only could Black Americans achieve the same success as white Americans, but that they could get along with each other in the process. By being on the same team, the same side, men who otherwise might have been stunted by their own preconceptions and limitations and bigotries learned to admire and even like other men very different from them.

They also aged during a very tumultuous period in America's cultural development. The Vietnam War was at its peak while Kahn wrote this book, black-white relations in America were perhaps at their most volatile ever. Two players saw their sons fight in Vietnam and return changed - one mentally, the other physically and mentally. Another had a special needs child, at a time when there still were not many services for such children. Other players had come from backgrounds where blacks were not welcome, and returned to such places, no longer sharing that feeling. You get the sense in this book that they are no longer at one with their hometown because of their experiences playing alongside black men.

Plus, the Dodgers left Brooklyn. Their team no longer even existed. The LA Dodgers were not the Brooklyn Dodgers. Truly, an era had ended. Not an era of innocence, nor one that could really be considered "the good old days", although we are often wont to refer to the 1950's as both. But an era of growth, of optimism, of shared experiences for these athletes, and perhaps, vicariously, for their fans.

Never really a dedicated sports fan, but a voracious and eclectic reader familiar with its reputation, I approached THE BOYS OF SUMMER fully expecting an excellent book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, but unprepared for what I found.

Less a team history than a memoir of the best of times and the worst of times, author Roger Kahn, a former sportswriter for the late NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, has accomplished the nearly impossible task of preserving an era in amber.

At the outset, we are introduced to Kahn's endearingly pretentious and unusual family: The father, Gordon, called "Gore-DON" by his wife, Olga, both teachers; the maternal grandfather, Dr. Rockow, a refugee of the Russian Revolution who obtained his Doctorate of Dentistry in Bern, Switzerland; the deceased grandmother, who, before her death at forty, had acheived a European M.D. Degree in an era when most women in her world were barely literate, much less successfully professional; the younger sister, Emily, stricken with polio; and Roger himself, a well-educated young man whose passion was Dodger baseball.

[A previous reviewer is critical of the "Marxism" of the book, but obviously, s/he did not read past page thirty; in painting us a living portrait of his family, Kahn tells us that they read, among many others, "Karl Marx and Freud," and refers affectionately to his Russian-Jewish immigrant grandfather as an "old Marxist toothpuller." Kahn's family was somewhat unusual for its time in being stolidly and successfully middle-class and firmly dedicated to Middle European humanist intellectualism in Depression-era, overwhelmingly blue-collar Jewish Brooklyn; but to call this book "Marxist" or equate it with DAS KAPITAL is to say that THE CAT IN THE HAT is equivalent to GRAY'S ANATOMY because it was written by a Dr. Seuss.]

Living within view of Ebbet's Field, baseball was central to Roger's summer universe. This centrality was reinforced by his erudite father, who, when not discussing Joyce and Flaubert at the dinner table, was playing endless games of catch with his son and regularly taking him to games. With no appreciation of sports, Olga, "who had pretentions toward atheism" pleaded with God to intervene: "Please let him read one book; just ONE book." God's choice for Roger was FUNDAMENTALS OF PITCHING, which he carried around with him for weeks.

Whether Olga appreciated it or not, Roger was developing a Love For The Game, and he became the HERALD TRIBUNE's point man at Ebbet's Field just as the Dodgers emerged from a decades-long obscurity to become not only one of the preeminent franchises in baseball history, but also an historic team.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had always been iconoclastic. The only Major League team representing only a portion of it's home city (granted, Brooklyn had been an independent city until 1898), the team members lived locally and were well-known in their various Brooklyn neighborhoods.

From 1921 to 1938, the Dodgers were barely competitive. A chronically bankrupt franchise locally beloved but belittled as "dem bums," the fog began to lift in the War Years. The Dodgers captured a pennant in 1941. From 1941 to 1945 they played hard, but wartime manpower needs kept the team from truly excelling. It was not until 1947 that the Dodgers blossomed.

And as they blossomed, they made history as well, being the first modern Major League team to sign a black player, Jackie Robinson. Despite being vilified by certain elements, Robinson was MVP and led them to stellar heights. And despite a plethora of personal opinions about Robinson, the team as a whole responded positively to Robinson's amazing energy, and played magnificently for the next decade. Though not every Dodger was dedicated to Civil Rights, only one, aptly named Dixie Walker, asked to be traded, and was. The rest eventually accepted Number 42 as a teammate, and either liked him or loathed him for himself.

Perennial Pennant winners, they nonetheless could never overcome the dominance of their crosstown American League rivals, the Yankees, even in 1953, when they statistically outplayed the famed Murderers' Row team of 1927. The Dodger lament was always "Wait 'Til Next Year." It was not until 1955 that they could proudly claim, "This IS Next Year!"

But by then, the team had aged, Robinson was gone, and Kahn, too, had moved on. The last trolleys ran in Brooklyn in October of 1956, and with no more trolleys to dodge, the Dodgers vanished from Brooklyn in 1957 and took up residence in Los Angeles. Kahn ends the first half of his book by recounting the death of his father, but it is only one ending among many in that time.

Part Two of THE BOYS OF SUMMER brings us The Boys of Summer" in their autumn. Written in 1971, the book provides a series of encapsulated snapshots of each of the former team members in their fifties, some fat, some thin, some embittered, some wistful, some successful and some lost in time. The Boys in their age largely returned to their roots, most of them to little towns in the South and Midwest where they ran lumberyards, coached Little League, and were Presidents of their local Rotaries. Each has a story to tell, and so much of what made the Dodgers a truly great team is revealed in these pages.

Jackie Robinson stands out. It is hard, sixty years later, to realize how daring owner Branch Rickey was to sign Robinson at that time, and how difficult Robinson's journey was. "Brown v. Board of Education" was still seven years in the future, Jim Crow was rampant, Dr. King's Montgomery Bus Boycott was a decade away, and still Robinson overcame all obstacles, mostly because of his iron determination off the field and his spectacular talent on the field, attributes which his teammates, and then his opponents, came to respect.

The team's sudden, unexpected departure from Brooklyn is still lamented, and then-owner Walter O'Malley is still hated for it: "If a Brooklynite with a gun has only two bullets and Hitler, Mussolini and O'Malley are his targets, who does he shoot? O'Malley---twice."

Although some reviewers accuse Kahn of revisionism in his treatment of O'Malley, a close reading of the last chapters reveals something different. While most Brooklynites' long-standing hatred of O'Malley is real, it is the hatred of the townsman for the corporation that closes the mill, throwing the factory town into crisis---personal, and yet remote.

The bitterness remains. The Los Angeles Dodgers are still often referred to as the Los Angeles Traitors. In this reviewer's family, Dodger defeats, particularly to the Mets at Shea or to the Yankees, are greeted with, "Take that! That's what you get for leaving!" And it's been fifty years since they've gone. Of course, the Dodgers were in Brooklyn for seventy years beforehand.

Kahn's hatred of O'Malley is more immediate and visceral than the average fan's. He so clearly utterly despises O'Malley, who comes across as a self-proclaimed Manhattanite, a rude, self-righteous, pompous, wealthy and greedy snob, a businessman with no interest in baseball, a seeker only of the greenback who cared not at all for fan affections, and who dismissed Brooklyn as the Provinces; in short a man who deserved, and perhaps even wanted, to be hated.

The Irish Catholic O'Malley proclaimed himself a "Tory." He fined staffers a dollar each time they mentioned Branch Rickey by name. Robinson was a showboater in his estimation, and it was New York's fault the Dodgers left---if Brooklyn had wanted the team Brooklyn should have met his demands for a new stadium and other concessions.

With no Love of The Game, O'Malley's decision to move the team was based, solely and selfishly, on his desire to line his own pockets (he was always notoriously cheap with fans, players, and staffers), and to create his own power dynasty far from the interference of the New York Elites, to whom he was an also-ran.

Many people have written that the Dodgers left because "Brooklyn was changing" as "white flight" drove the middle classes to the suburbs. This ignores the fact that many areas did not change demographically, and that the process was neither sudden nor total. It also discounts the fact that minorities are not immune to an appreciation of the National Pastime. It ignores the fact that the Dodger departure was not so much an effect as a cause of these changes. Local historians mark 1957 as the end of an era in Brooklyn history.

Lastly, although the Borough was changing, it was also remaining the same, as the home of newly-arrived immigrant minorities. Brooklyn could (and should) have remained the home of this beloved team. It was thriving and would have continued to thrive. As Kahn says: "In a perfect world, Brooklyn would have the Dodgers and the Mets would be in Los Angeles."

Would that it were.

This is wonderful tale. It constantly has you wondering what could be next. You soon discover that anything is possible.

My all-time favorite baseball book. A must read for anyone that loves the game (or loves a good story).

If you love baseball, fantasy, and especially the Chicago Cubs you can't help but love Kinsella's delightful tale. As another baseball season gets ready to start this book will get you into the right frame of mind. Similar in style to the wonderful "The Year It Finally Happened."

What's so mind-boggling is the drugs that Kinsella must have been smoking in order to come up with this one. Now read this description of the book:
An albino, like his dead father, is convinced that a 3000 inning game took place 80-some years ago between the Chicago Cubs and the Iowa baseball Confederacy All-stars. The albino is somehow able to go back in time and witness the game (as a matter of fact the local hicks use him as a good-luck charm and rub his head before stepping to the plate, allowing him to remain in the dugout) in all its glory. Then Teddy Roosevelt shows up and takesa few swings, telling the pitcher not to patronize him after throwing an easy pitch, and then making a cheap pun about the bat being a "big stick." Soon after that Leonardo DaVinci showed up in a balloon and watches a few innings. Shortly thereafter a giant flood occurs and some of the players spontaeneouly throw themselves in the waters. To fill the vacancies, a statue of an angel plays in the outfield.

There, I think I've covered all the bases, so to speak. Oh, I forgot the Native America named "Drifting Away" who is messing with the reality of this county and eventually plays in the game too.

Look, I don't like to be so completely negative, but the book was ludicrous. To make matters worse, it throws in a fairly gratuitous love interest who is the spitting image of the Albino protagonist's mother (kinda Fruedian) and more seemingly random things than could possibly be mentioned in this review. And bear in mind, reading these things, that I'm a baseball fan.
3/10

W.P. Kinsella is one of my all-time favorite writers, and this is one of his better novels. If you've seen the movie, "Field of Dreams," or read his book "Shoeless Joe," which was the basis for the movie, you know what to expect from Kinsella.

His stories of baseball and magic are written for readers with vivid imaginations. This is a story of a researcher looking for proof of an old league that nobody else can remember. He somehow ends up at a never-ending exhibition game between the 1908 Cubs and the all-stars from this Iowa league.

As usual with Kinsella, the book is about a lot more than baseball. If you're the type of reader who can accept a story that seems totally unbelievbale, and if you like baseball, you should try this one. If you like it, he's written quite a few other books and I haven't found a bad one yet.