YA author Hoose (The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, 2004, etc.) recalls his youthful obsession with baseball and the profound impact of his casual friendship with a famous cousin who played for the Yankees.
Growing up in 1950s Indianapolis, the author loved nothing more than baseball. With the help of indulgent parents who subscribed to nearly every magazine about the sport, he quickly became the neighborhood expert, even fielding phone calls from his barber to settle arguments. Despite his voluminous knowledge, Hoose was dismayed by his lack of prowess on the field, where he was often the last one chosen. Just as he seemingly reached his pre-adolescent nadir, his father mentioned that he was related to none other than Don Larsen, a pitcher for the New York Yankees. The boy wrote to his second cousin about his struggles and received an encouraging note in return, setting in motion a long-distance relationship that would have a significant effect on Hoose’s life (though Larsen would only vaguely remember the details years later). Once word spread about his famous relation, he quickly became something of a local celebrity, especially after Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, in 1956. Though it took place during school hours, Hoose managed to see a few innings thanks to a comically frantic arrangement with his mother, who rode his bike to school at lunchtime so that he could pedal it back home, eat while watching the game, then race back to school just in time for class. These idyllic remembrances perpetuate the pervading cliché that sport was a better, purer pursuit in the past. Hoose’s genuine passion for the game shines through, however, and the self-effacing descriptions of his boyhood troubles make you want to root, root, root for the kid with the big glasses and the wild arm.
Removed from perfect indeed, but all the more charming for it.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-8027-1537-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
Did you like this book?
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
