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The Boys of Summer | 
 enlarge | Author: Roger Kahn
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: £14.95
Buy New: £5.41
You Save: £9.54 (64%)
New (16) Used (6) from £2.48
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 53556
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reissue
Pages: 512
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0060883960
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780060883966
ASIN: 0060883960
Publication Date: May 9, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 I See The Boys Of Summer In Their Ruin... December 12, 2007
SJR
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Roger Kahn has long been hailed as the greatest American sports writer and after reading 'The Boys Of Summer' it is easy to see why. The book is divided into two main parts, with interludes and memoriums to fallen ball players filling the gaps.
Part one describes growing up in Brooklyn, within shouting distance of the no longer existing Ebbets Field, home of the no longer existing Brooklyn Dodgers. It starts with Kahn's family life and his early years in journalism which culminates in him being appointed to cover the Dodgers for two years, the team he has supported and obsessed about all his young life.
Starting his dream job, he follows the Dodgers from Miami, for Spring training to the World Series in both seasons making long lasting friendships with players that he knew fanatically as a regular at Ebbets Field and then as complex people each with differing philosophies, tastes, beliefs and anxieties.
The list of Dodger's in those two seasons include Jackie Robinson, the first black player to play Major League, the team slugger,'Duke' Snider, the greatest glove the game ever saw in 3rd baseman Billy Cox, Preacher Roe - the spit ball specialist, Erskine - the pitcher and master of the overhand curve, Campy - the catcher and winner of 3 straight MVPs, Black -the first black pitcher to win a World Series game and of course the short stop and captain, the late great Pee Wee Reese.
The second part of the book, sees Kahn tracking down The Boys of Summer, now retired from the game and living very different lives in different parts of the States. These stories are probably even stronger. I have read the book 3 times now and on the 3rd read I started at part 2 to soak in all the charateristics of these men and then finished with part 1, reading baout them in their sporting prime.
It has everything a great sports books needs: passion, soul and a true understanding of the game and the people both within it and outside it. Great sporting achievements are very difficult to put into words, but Kahn does it so well you end up rooting for both the team and him.
It is a story of a very diffrent time and almost a different world, but all avid sports fans who realise that the games we watch and the games we play are a passion, addiction and a love beyond the reaches of intellect and reason will love it forever.
Simon Rance, author of The FC Nantes Experiment.
Why baseball is more than just a game... April 26, 2002
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Some sports lend themselves to quality writing. In the UK the finest prose is almost always devoted to cricket. Perhaps it's the slow pace,allowing contemplation, punctuated by bursts of intense action, or its historical link to some pastoral England which may or may not have existed. . Baseball is similarly blessed in the USA,and Kahn's book with its thoughtful ,insightful and moving style, its unashamed and autobiographical content, and its warts and all description of the struggles of black athletes for acceptance in 1950s America, is outstanding. Its greatest triumph, though, is the obvious love and respect that the author has not only for the game but also those flawed and complex characters who played it. The book glows with this warmth, as it follows the mixed fortunes of the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers some 20 years later.
A sad story, brilliantly written. February 13, 2001
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a very sad story of how fate conspired to rob a team of the success they deserved and then dealt so cruelly with many of the players in their later lives. The story of the seasons Kahn spent with the team is absorbing. The stories of his meetings with them many years later are moving. The book is brilliantly written. It is about sport but more about the struggles of mankind. An undoubted 5 stars.
 Very dissapointing January 1, 1999
2 out of 12 found this review helpful
If you are expecting an insightful potrait of baseball in 1950's Brooklyn look elsewhere. What this book delivers instead is a re-heated version of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." The author is so self-absorbed that any baseball lore one may find in the book must be washed down with a large dose of his syrupy personal saga. Along the way Kahn manages to drain all the vitality out of baseball and replace it with warm tapioca pudding.
A deeply moving story of the Jackie Robinson Dodgers December 30, 1998
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
There's no sugarcoating of the Jackie Robinson Dodgers in this story. We see them in full, pioneers, bigots, fathers and husbands.The way that they have survived the changes in their lives says far more about their character than any penny-ante poem or polemic. Kahn lived and worked with these men for two years, and his achievement is that he makes us feel that we knew them as well as he did.
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