Although many readers already know the outcome of the 1985 season, Donnelly does a good job of building suspense. A solid...
A look back at the 1985 Major League Baseball season as the New York Mets were unexpectedly poised to dominate while the usually mighty New York Yankees seemed vulnerable.
Although of interest primarily to devoted baseball fans and/or New Yorkers, Donnelly’s (How the Yankees Explain New York, 2014, etc.) mostly chronological review might hold fascination for general readers as a psychological study of multiple intriguing characters in the sport. These include Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner, a stern businessman often characterized by his narcissism, cruelty, and inability to recognize the truth; Yankees’ manager Billy Martin (the Billy Brawl of the book’s title), who could not control his temper despite his advancing age; and, as dramatic contrast to Martin, New York Mets’ manager Davey Johnson, who wanted to win just as much as his counterpart but who understood the importance of being respected by his players rather than feared or hated. Throughout the narrative, Donnelly also offers insights into the dispositions of key players, especially the mercurial Mets trio of pitcher Dwight Gooden, outfielder Darryl Strawberry, and outfielder Lenny Dykstra. The author mostly resists the temptation to flash ahead beyond the 1985 season, but he gives some attention to the later personal tragedies of Gooden, Strawberry, and Dykstra. Regarding the Mets who did not self-destruct later, catcher Gary Carter and first baseman Keith Hernandez are portrayed in especially compelling detail. On the Yankees’ side, one of Donnelly’s most well-fleshed-out characters is first baseman Don Mattingly, who played his entire career for the team and is currently the manager of the Miami Marlins, and the author also captures the essence of famously eccentric outfielder Rickey Henderson. Pitcher Ed Whitson, a lesser-known Yankee, is perhaps the most persecuted player in the narrative, and readers are quite likely to feel sympathy for his treatment.
Although many readers already know the outcome of the 1985 season, Donnelly does a good job of building suspense. A solid choice for both Mets and Yankees fans.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0553-7
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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