The Jazz Singer moves uptown to the Polo Grounds, in a first novel by historian Levine (Ellis Island to Ebbets Field, 1992) based on the early career of the New York Giants” first Jewish pitcher. Like many a nice Jewish boy before him, Morrie Ginsberg doesn—t always see eye to eye with his father. Jake Ginsberg is a real greenhorn, an immigrant who got out of the Russian shtetl and made it to Brooklyn, where he settled down to business and raised a nice family. And for this his son Morrie is grateful? That all depends. Morrie practically grew up on the streets, and on the streets of Brownsville in the 1920s, you—re going to learn more about baseball than about the rag trade. Babe Ruth and the Yankees are the bane of Giants” owner John McGraw’s life, especially since Yankee Stadium is less than five blocks from the Polo Grounds. How to win back the crowds that the Bambino has poached from the Giants? Well, a Jewish pitcher might not be a bad start, especially if he’s any good, and McGraw’s scouts have found this kid Ginsberg over in Brooklyn. So Morrie is signed up, much against his father’s wishes. He’s not exactly prepared for the world of the major leagues, but he finds his feet in short order and eventually leads the Giants to a National League pennant and a shot at the Yankees. Along the way, Morrie become friends (of a sort) with the Babe and straightens things out with Dad, who comes to see that his son is as American as baseball itself. Corny but fun. The oy-gevalt dialogue (—You play a stupid game, a job for bums not men, and this makes you important? Such a country I don—t understand!—) is straight out of an old Goldbergs episode, but the characters (and the games) seem real enough to satisfy any baseball fan—and many other readers as well.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-87013-517-1
Page Count: 266
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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