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THE CHICAGO CUBS

Name: THE CHICAGO CUBS
Author: Rich Cohen
ISBN: 978-0-374-12092-4

STORY OF A CURSE

by Rich Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2017

Cohen’s accounts of the team, the players, the games and the culture surrounding the Cubs are brisk and informative, and his...

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In 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908—and thereby hangs this tale.

Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone contributing editor Cohen (The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones, 2016, etc.), a lifelong Cubs fan, rehearses in swift, entertaining fashion the genesis of the team and its glory years (there were many early on) and long decades of mediocrity, and he introduces us to some key players over the years. Grover Cleveland Alexander, Ernie Banks, Bill Buckner, Hack Wilson, Ron Santo, Sammy Sosa: these and many other celebrated, even infamous names populate the early pages of this love story so full of broken hearts, the author’s included. The Cubs' frequent losses—and the dominance of the curse, whose origins and manifestations Cohen considers throughout—eventually drove the author to give up on the team and to quit following them. Until, of course, the resurrection, which, Cohen shows, began in 2009 when the Ricketts family purchased the franchise and made key hires, including team president Theo Epstein and manager Joe Maddon, and promising acquisitions. Finally, hope returned to reign at Wrigley Field, whose story the author also tells us. The concluding 60 or so pages deal with the newly risen Cubs, who didn’t quite make it in 2015 but who defeated the Cleveland Indians in seven games in 2016 to finally break the curse. The author provides smooth summaries of each of the seven contests, calling Game 7 “the greatest baseball game of all time.” (Tribe fans may disagree.)

Cohen’s accounts of the team, the players, the games and the culture surrounding the Cubs are brisk and informative, and his many personal stories, strung like holiday lights throughout the narrative, illuminate a fan’s frangible heart that annually repaired itself.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-374-12092-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017

Categories:

SPORTS & RECREATION

- BOOK REVIEW
MURDER IN THE DOLLHOUSE
by Rich Cohen

- BOOK REVIEW
WHEN THE GAME WAS WAR
by Rich Cohen

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ADVENTURES OF HERBIE COHEN
by Rich Cohen

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THE KID WHO CLIMBED EVEREST

THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF A 23-YEAR-OLD’S SUMMIT OF MT. EVEREST

by Bear Grylls ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

Occasionally breathless and clunky, this is a vivid and inspiring read all the same, sure to find a large audience among...

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Another stone added to the growing mountain of Everest adventures.

Newcomer Grylls was serving in the British army in 1996 when he suffered a parachuting accident that left him with three broken vertebrae and a badly bruised spinal cord. In the months of physical therapy that followed, this avid climber rekindled a childhood dream to climb the world’s tallest peak—a feat that very few mountaineers younger than 30 have ever managed to pull off. “Everest is no place to prove yourself,” the author admits. “The likelihood of reaching the summit is so slim that you’re inevitably setting yourself up to be disappointed.” Even so, he talked his way into a slot on a 1998 British expedition led by a tough-as-nails ex-Marine commando who urged his teammates through the icy, windswept hells that Grylls describes quite effectively. For instance, he tells us that one area of Everest, the Icefalls, is so named because great spears of ice break off the sun-warmed slope in mid-afternoon, sharp and heavy enough to kill anyone standing “deep within the jaws of the overhang”; his account of the party’s race across the region is a fine set piece that doesn’t compare at all badly to the best Everest narratives. Against all odds, the author endured the Icefalls, the Lhotse Face, and other challenges the mountain threw up along the way, eventually arriving at the aptly named Death Zone, where, hyperventilating, he communed with the body of Rob Hall (whose death stands at the dramatic heart of Jon Krakauer’s 1997 account, Into Thin Air) and then took the summit—all at the tender age of 23.

Occasionally breathless and clunky, this is a vivid and inspiring read all the same, sure to find a large audience among outdoor-adventure and climbing buffs.

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 1-58574-250-3

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Lyons Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001

Categories:

SPORTS & RECREATION

- BOOK REVIEW
DO YOUR BEST
by Bear Grylls ; illustrated by Rachel Akerman

- BOOK REVIEW
MUD, SWEAT, AND TEARS
by Bear Grylls

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JUMP

by Mike Lupica ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1995

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New York's most controversial tabloid sports reporter fouls out in a lazy whodunit. Pro hoops stars Ellis ``Fresh'' Adair and Richie Collins are two kids from the projects who have made it big. African-American Fresh is basketball's most skilled player since Michael Jordan. Richie, a Latino, made his name by getting the ball to Fresh. Together, they bring the New York Knicks to another level and as their reward are admired by millions of strangers—a familiar situation that Lupica milks for all it's worth. Fresh and Richie gain unwanted notoriety when Hannah Carey, a blond fitness instructor with a past, accuses the two of rape. Enter the book's nominal hero, Tony DiMaggio, a former baseball player turned sports sleuth who is hired by the Knicks to get to the bottom of this mess before the cops do. He discovers that Richie, a wolf in point guard's clothing, was indeed the rapist; Fresh, for reasons later made clear, wanted no part of Hannah, who, it seems was infatuated with A.J., yet another Knick. Later, Richie's trouble keeping his pants on earns him an ice pick in the heart—and Fresh is nowhere to be found. As DiMaggio digs up more dirt, he discovers that Fresh is innocent, on the run for more personal reasons. To find Richie's killer, DiMaggio follows the trail of broken hearts leading away from the dead hoopster's coffin. He learns that Richie was a serial rapist who believed that every woman was ``asking for it,'' especially from him, a bona fide superstar. This otherwise interesting bit of insight into the mind of a pro jock serves as the foundation for many red herrings, but the real killer, like the entire book, is obvious. Setting his thriller in the pro basketball universe, Lupica (Dead Air, 1986, etc.) slavishly follows the adage ``write what you know'' but forgets to make it interesting.