A magnificent, exhaustively researched chronicle in words and pictures of our nation's pastime, and how it came to be what it is. In their analysis and celebration of baseball's evolution over 150 years from a game played on vacant city lots in front of a few lookers-on to present-day contests in domed stadia with television audiences approaching one billion, Ward and Burns (The Civil War, 1990) divide the sport's history into nine sections (or innings), each with accompanying essays by such notable writers as Gerald Early, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and George Will. Perhaps most noteworthy is this volume's ability to examine the game while remaining blessedly free from the overanalysis and intellectualization that are common to such comprehensive studies. To wit: Babe Ruth is seen not so much as a lens through which a historical era can be studied, but as a great player whose accomplishments helped alter millions of fans' connection to the game. Also worthy of high praise is the straightforward depiction of black players' exclusion, stemming from an unwritten agreement among team owners, during the period spanning from the late 1800s until 1947. It is made painfully clear, particularly in an interview with Negro League star Buck O'Neil, that prejudice deprived the game of several of its greatest players—and that integration, while having made great strides both in baseball and America, has a long way to go. Burns's assertion in the preface that baseball is a ``powerful metaphor...for all Americans'' might be dismissed by some as just a tad ingenuous. However, the true genius of this work is in demonstrating how the baseball diamond does provide a common ground for a nation comprised of disparate elements, overcoming cultural, ethnic, and regional barriers better than nearly any other institution. This companion volume to an upcoming PBS series also stands on its own as a literary achievement. (First printing of 400,000; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40459-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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
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