Careful, pointed writing shows us that professional sports should not be viewed in isolation from the society in which they...
As social change roiled through the 1960s, Major League Baseball was sometimes a mirror, sometimes a window.
Freelance writer Florio (Blind Moon Alley, 2014, etc.) and documentary producer Shapiro focus on baseball throughout, but they don’t neglect other sports or popular culture. The authors, who co-wrote One Punch from the Promised Land: Leon Spinks, Michael Spinks, and the Myth of the Heavyweight Title (2013), deal with Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali—his rise, his anti–Vietnam War stance—and, briefly, with the 1968 Summer Olympics and the protests by sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. The Beatles continually pop up, as well, but the authors’ principal interest is in how professional baseball reacted to the social turmoil of the decade. Proceeding chronologically, they highlight certain athletes, using them to illustrate issues ranging from race (black players were growing increasingly unhappy—and vocal—about their status and treatment) to religion (Sandy Koufax would miss a World Series start because of Yom Kippur). We see players battling with management (men who do not come off at all well here), with the Jim Crow South, and with the rise of unionism in the sport. The authors spend some time with Curt Flood’s struggle with baseball’s reserve clause, and they continually remind us of the deep darkness of that decade: the political assassinations, the war, the clashes over civil rights. Sometimes, their focus drifts a bit when there are particularly engaging sports tales to tell—e.g., the amazing years for pitchers Bob Gibson and Denny McLain and the racial frustrations that often animated the performances of Ernie Banks and Dick Allen. The authors interviewed many of the principals and read numerous books written by them; they are especially strong on Jim Bouton’s transformative sports memoir, Ball Four (1970).
Careful, pointed writing shows us that professional sports should not be viewed in isolation from the society in which they function.Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8690-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.
The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.
As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich...
A reflective and entertaining journey through Japan, as the author seeks to reconnect with his martial arts sensei.
Lowry is a student of koryu (not to be confused with kendo), a style of Japanese classical swordsmanship. Koryu is a medieval art, like Noh and the tea ceremony, a style of combat born on the battlefield–but more importantly, it’s a way to address the world (though an esoteric one: Lowry may well be the only American practicing the art in the United States). Indeed, present-day practitioners refrain from exercising its fatal possibilities. Lowry’s sensei left the U.S. to return to Japan, urging Lowry to follow. Though his life headed in a different direction, he never forgot his training–when the time was ripe, he journeyed to Japan to join his sensei. The narrative revolves around this pivotal decision, and it provides a warm center from which the author expounds on such topics as the glories of a Japanese bath; the evolution of the Samurai caste; the peculiarities of Japanese landscape architecture; the elements of proper sandal-tying; the custom of the premarital shenanigans called yobai; and the teachings of mikkyo Buddhism. He also includes the vital story of the sword–what it reveals about Japanese life and technology, social structure and aesthetic values, etiquette, apprenticeship and the process of education. Lowry’s seriousness lends an earnest cast to the proceedings, but he’s not without a sense of humor–commenting upon his accomplished slurping of noodles, a friend’s wife notes, “He really sucks!”
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich tradition.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2005
ISBN: 1-890536-10-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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