by Jim Russo with Bob Hammel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1992
As a scout for the Baltimore Orioles (originally the St. Louis Browns) from 1952-87, Russo participated in one of baseball's most prestigious and successful franchises. Here, in a loosely structured series of anecdotes, he offers an enjoyable look at those years. Hired in 1952 as a ``commission scout'' for the floundering Browns (paid $100 for each step a player made up the baseball ladder, a scout earned $1,000 if his discovery made the major leagues), Russo had the task of signing quality players for little or no bonus money and not much more than promises. By 1958, he was in charge of 26 states and 14 scouts. The club was in Baltimore by then, and their perennial goal was to knock off the hated New York Yankees. The Orioles finally did that in 1966 and, as Russo proudly points out, with the exceptions of Frank Robinson and Luis Aparicio, they beat the Yanks with home-grown talent. Over the next 20 years, there would be more division and league championships and a few World Series rings. Russo recounts that period with fond, sharp remembrance, profiling the players, managers, and owners he worked with: Earl Weaver, the Robinsons Frank and Brooks, Bill Veeck, Boog Powell, Jim Palmer, and numerous others. Of particular interest are his behind-the-scenes accounts of the scouting and signing of players like Palmer, Dave McNally, Wally Bunker, Davey Johnson, and others. As a judge of talent, a front office confidant, and a pioneer in scouting the other league prior to a World Series, Russo ``saw them all'' and does not hesitate to offer his frank evaluations. Despite a lack of personal data and a confusing chronological sequence: a dandy, feisty take on the grand old game.
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-929387-69-4
Page Count: 230
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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