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Summary
Summary
4 cassettes / 4 hours Read by Ken Burns The companion AudioBook to Ken Burns's magnificent PBS Television Series The authors of the acclaimed and history-making bestseller The Civil War now turn to another defining American phenomenon. Their subject is Baseball. During eight months of the year, it is played professionally every day; all year round, amateurs play it, watch it, and dream about it. Baseball produces remarkable Americans: it seizes hold of ordinary people and shapes them into something we must regard with awe. Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio . . . truly gifted human beings acting out universal fantasies that, for whatever reason, are most perfectly expressed on a baseball field. All this and more rings through Ward and Burns's moving, crowded, fascinating history of the game - a history that goes beyond stolen bases, triple plays, and home runs to demonstrate how baseball has been influenced by, and has in turn influenced our national life: politics, race, labor, big business, advertising, and social custom. The audio covers every milestone of the game: from the rules drawn up in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright to the founding of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players in 1885, from the 1924 Negro World Series through Jack Roosevelt Robinson's major-league debut in 1947, and Nolan Ryan's seventh and last no-hitter in 1991. Monumental, affecting, informative, and entertaining - Baseball is an audio that speaks to all Americans.
Author Notes
Ken Burns, July 29, 1953 - Ken Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1953. Burns attended the alternative campus of Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts, graduating with a degree in film making.
After graduating from college, Burns began Florentine Films with a few of his friends, and began creating his first documentary, entitled "The Brooklyn Bridge." This film won an Academy Award in 1982. His most famous work is his "Civil War" series, which has won many various awards. Burns was the first film maker to be inducted into the Society of American Historians, an unprecedented honor.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Geoffrey C. Ward is an author, historian, and screenwriter. He has written for numerous documentary films, and has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Reviews (6)
Booklist Review
Ages 10-adult. Another home run for acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns! This multivolume celebration of baseball history from the director of The Civil War [BKL Je 15 90] is the origins of the acclaimed book [BKL Jl 94]. A remarkable melding of vintage stills, archival baseball footage, realistic background sounds, heartfelt readings, and insightful comments from historians, authors, sportscasters, and baseball greats trace baseball history from its 1840 beginnings to the 1993 World Series, when a Canadian team prevailed. Sepia-tone photographs set against "The Star Spangled Banner" atmospherically open Third Inning, 1910-1920: The Faith of 50 Million People. John Chancellor's resonant narration transports viewers to an era when irascible slugger Ty Cobb and amazing pitchers Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson dominated. World Series clashes, the opening of new ballparks, and the infamous Black Sox scandal are vividly recounted. Opening Seventh Inning, 1950-1960: The Capital of Baseball, rabid New York Yankee fan Billy Crystal reminisces about his first visit to venerable Yankee Stadium. Concentrating on New York teams, this nostalgic portrait follows the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants during their 1950s heyday, when "New York dominated the game." Although a few players from other teams (Ted Williams) are given their due, the focus is on New York's colorful players and managers. This compelling, occasionally humorous series (Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine is a treasure) celebrates timeless moments for both die-hard fans and casual observers who are sure to get caught up in the crowd noise and the drama of the memorable games, teams, and players so artfully evoked here. An onscreen counting index lends subject accessibility. Some other baseball retrospectives are Forever Baseball [BKL Je 1 90] and The Story of America's Classic Ballparks [BKL My 1 92]. ~--Sue-Ellen Beauregard
Library Journal Review
Having conquered the Civil War in book and miniseries, Ward and Burns turn to another important American concern: baseball. A BOMC main selection. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A magnificent, exhaustively researched chronicle in words and pictures of our nation's pastime, and how it came to be what it is. In their analysis and celebration of baseball's evolution over 150 years from a game played on vacant city lots in front of a few lookers-on to present-day contests in domed stadia with television audiences approaching one billion, Ward and Burns (The Civil War, 1990) divide the sport's history into nine sections (or innings), each with accompanying essays by such notable writers as Gerald Early, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and George Will. Perhaps most noteworthy is this volume's ability to examine the game while remaining blessedly free from the overanalysis and intellectualization that are common to such comprehensive studies. To wit: Babe Ruth is seen not so much as a lens through which a historical era can be studied, but as a great player whose accomplishments helped alter millions of fans' connection to the game. Also worthy of high praise is the straightforward depiction of black players' exclusion, stemming from an unwritten agreement among team owners, during the period spanning from the late 1800s until 1947. It is made painfully clear, particularly in an interview with Negro League star Buck O'Neil, that prejudice deprived the game of several of its greatest players--and that integration, while having made great strides both in baseball and America, has a long way to go. Burns's assertion in the preface that baseball is a ``powerful metaphor...for all Americans'' might be dismissed by some as just a tad ingenuous. However, the true genius of this work is in demonstrating how the baseball diamond does provide a common ground for a nation comprised of disparate elements, overcoming cultural, ethnic, and regional barriers better than nearly any other institution. This companion volume to an upcoming PBS series also stands on its own as a literary achievement. (First printing of 400,000; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Booklist Review
Baseball comes to PBS? Don't worry, all you public-broadcasting snobs. It's not as bad as it sounds. Your local PBS affiliate hasn't outbid the major networks for the Game of the Week. Instead, Ken Burns, whose Civil War documentary won more than 40 film and television awards, has turned from Bull Run to Bull Durham, producing a new, nine-part video on baseball that will air in the fall. Published in conjunction with the PBS program, this lavishly produced, gorgeously illustrated history of the game rises far above the often dreary "companion volume" genre. Coauthored by Burns and Geoffrey Ward, the book devotes its nine chapters (or "innings," as they're called) to a decade-by-decade survey of the evolution of baseball. Complementing the historical material are more than 500 photos, some in color, and several impressionistic essays by various luminaries including Thomas Boswell and George Will. Perhaps surprisingly, the essays are the only weak link. Yes, baseball inspires us all to flights of rhetorical fancy, but isn't it time to call a moratorium on this sort of thing: "America is about hope and renewal. And gloriously, so is baseball, pulsing with the mystery of the seasons and life itself." Thanks for sharing that, John Thorn, but the pictures and the unadorned facts presented here say it far more eloquently. Baseball doesn't need purple prose; the game's faces, names, dates, and numbers carry their own poetry, and Ward and Burns, unlike some of the essayists, wisely avoid the temptation to wax lyrical. Fans will find plenty to quibble about in these pages (too much Mantle; not enough Mays), but with the exception of The Baseball Encyclopedia, there is no better one-volume history of the sport. ~--Bill Ott
Choice Review
If you liked the movie, you'll love the book. This companion to Ken Burns's acclaimed epic television presentation Baseball captures the tone of the series: its nostalgia, its affirmations, its parade of heroes, and its premise that baseball is a synecdoche for America. It features an array of wonderful photographs and a text that corresponds closely to John Chancellor's crisp film commentary. It also contains independent essays by many of the guests whose insights and recollections lent texture to the television series. But the editorial perspective that controlled the series and shaped the book, if liberating in its celebration of African American baseball, was blinkered in other ways, and before the Burns view becomes canonical we need to rescue some of the individuals who are virtually omitted from its purview--including dominant players like Dan Brouthers, George Sisler, and Juan Marichal--and to take note of its relative neglect of the Latin American contribution to the national pastime. Baseball is a splendid book. But it is also a luxurious tract for the times, and displays all the strengths and weaknesses of the genre. All levels. R. Browning; Kenyon College
Library Journal Review
Baseball is indeed a mirror of American life, and Ward and Burns show how well America's story is told through baseball. Their book is the companion to a nine-part PBS television documentary scheduled to begin on September 18. In format and approach it resembles the authors' previous best seller, The Civil War (LJ 9/1/90). Each chapter, or "inning," proceeds chronologically with a dominant theme and dramatis personae. The profusion of striking illustrations add an extra dimension to each chapter. Another nice feature is the interlaced essays by such fine writers as Roger Angell, Robert Creamer, and Thomas Boswell on the hold that baseball has on ordinary people. The narrative gains force and momentum in sections examining the injustice of segregation and the forgotten heroes of the Negro leagues. Because the book is based on a documentary filmscript, the narrative sometimes seems a bit episodic, jumping from scene to scene and story to story. Overall, however, this rich and suggestive history is one of the finest books produced on baseball. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/94.]-Paul Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.