paper 1-55849-147-3 A historian’s dispassionate and sometimes arcane approach takes the edge off of one of baseball’s most exciting years. WW II was over, and Americans were busy piecing together their peacetime lives. Nowhere was this so evident as in baseball, which by 1948 had fully reclaimed the social and cultural preeminence it had enjoyed before the war. Americans— rekindled passion for baseball was further enhanced by one of the most exciting American League pennant races of memory, a three-way knock-down-drag-out scrum involving the New York Yankees, the rejuvenated Boston Red Sox, and the upstart Cleveland Indians, culminating in an electrifying season-ending series between the Sox and the Indians. The problem with Kaiser’s (History/Naval War College) account isn’t in the details. After all, it’s a story that encompasses great events—a pennant playoff, the appearance of the American League’s first African-American (the Indians— Larry Doby), and the death of Babe Ruth—and is studded with such stars as the Indians— dynamic duo, Lou Boudreau and Bill Veeck; the Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio; the Red Sox hero Ted Williams; and for added intrigue, the legendary manager Joe McCarthy, who prior to the season switched allegiances from the Yanks to the archrival Sox. The problem, then, lies in the telling. Kaiser does a creditable job of weaving first- and second-hand accounts into his chronicle of a furious season-long chase during which the eventual winner, Cleveland, never led by more than three and one-half games. The author’s undoing is that too often he turns to statistics, frequently using them not so much for illumination as for support. While the use of some statistics is certainly warranted, their overuse waters down the immediacy of a season widely remembered as one of baseball’s best. In the end, a book better suited to baseball historians than to casual fans of the game. (31 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55849-146-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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