It is this historic perspective that will appeal to the diehard sports historian and to fans of old-time baseball.
An academic biography of one of the best-known figures in baseball history.
Denton Young was born in 1867 and began to play baseball semi-professionally while still in his teens. During one game in Canton, Ohio, he threw some fastballs that hit the fence so hard they tore off some boards. The local newspaper tagged Young “the Cyclone,” and eventually the shortened nickname stuck. For 22 years, the right-hander demonstrated a pitching skill that became legendary. Browning (History/Kenyon Coll.) relies on extensive written sources in order to give a historically placed picture of Young and his sport, although he is hampered by the fact that Young played before the advent of photojournalism and the development of sportswriting. His task was made all the more difficult by Young himself, who was an extremely private man even by the standards of his day. Browning writes about Young’s best games (including his famous perfect game of 1904) and describes Young (who for a time played and managed simultaneously) as a relentless innovator, continually experimenting and developing mastery over the fastball, curveball, change-up (known as the “slow ball”), and spitball. Russell also puts forward the arguments for and against declaring Young the greatest pitcher of all time (and the namesake of the major leagues’ pitching award): he won more games than anyone else (511 victories), after all, and he compiled more innings pitched than any other pitcher in baseball history (more than 7,350 innings). Browning’s dull prose, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired, but he does give an accurate (and fascinating) account of the development of baseball that took place during Young’s career. In 1890, for example, the pitcher would deliver from a marked-off rectangular box; by 1893, the pitching rubber had replaced the box and the pitching distance was lengthened; and in 1903, the foul strike rule was adopted.
It is this historic perspective that will appeal to the diehard sports historian and to fans of old-time baseball.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-55849-262-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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