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7/2/2003

Name: 7/2/2003
Author: Mike Sowell
ISBN: 0-02-612415-7

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF HALL-OF-FAMER BIG ED DELAHANTY

by Mike Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1992

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The title (a nominee for dullest of the year) refers to the day that Big Ed Delahanty, a heavy-drinking, heavy-hitting baseball superstar, tumbled down Niagara Falls to his death. An accident? Suicide? Murder? Sowell, who seems to specialize in baseball-death books (The Pitch that Killed, 1989), sorts through the clues in an intelligent study that, like its predecessor, uses tragedy as a springboard for carefully researched baseball history. Delahanty is forgotten today, despite his presence in the Hall of Fame and his spectacular lifetime hitting average (.345, fourth highest ever). Sowell does nothing to resurrect his subject's fame; he's far more interested in observing the social and economic forces that swirled around Delahanty's career. At the time of Big Ed's death, the National League, 20 years old and already carrying a reputation for rowdyism, faced stiff competition from the new, ``clean'' American League. Sowell recounts the battle for dominance between the leagues, as managers and players leapfrogged from one to the other while lawyers, union organizers, and gamblers stirred the muddied waters. Delahanty comes off as a minor figure, playing second fiddle to charismatic characters like pitcher John Montgomery Ward, a Columbia Univ. Law School graduate who racked up 47 wins in one year and was the first player to write a book about baseball. Nonetheless, Delahanty's strange death raises eyebrows. Was he driven to suicide by National League officials? Mugged by a stranger and tossed over the edge? What of the mysterious security guard who kept changing his story? Sowell takes no sides, except that of baseball itself, which he clearly loves. Filled with period trivia (``from the hotel, the players rode to the ballpark in uniform aboard horse-drawn carriages, a ceremony known as the `tally-ho' '') that lighten the tedium of the historical ins-and-outs, making this a hit—a solid double, no more, no less—for baseball buffs. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)

Pub Date: July 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-02-612415-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)