Glory Days: New York Baseball 1947-1957 Book

This fascinating book might be re-titled "the life and times of the 1939 New York World's Fair", as it gives an extensive history of the fair itself but also adds in the critically important context of the era, including the ramping up of the world towards global war, the aftermath of the Great Depression, and Albert Einstein's tragic, messy exile from his homeland and tangential association with the Manhattan project.

In a broader sense it captures the mood and struggle of all of America at the beginning of the 1940s, with its confused path out of poverty into wealth, and isolationism to Big Brother global policy. The book is also a sad reminder (and in fact at the end of the book the author says as much himself, in an aside) that the world just doesn't make characters like this anymore. The giant personalities in this book, just a few generations old, already seem mythical in their courage, power and outlandish excesses. We no longer have politicians this dashing, businessmen this outrageously principled, or villains this evil. The stage of the modern world seems pale and small compared to the grand drama that takes place within the pages of this book.

I had a few minor issues with the writing style, mostly the author's insistence on putting little thoughts and feelings into his "characters'" heads that he felt were dramatically appropriate but which can only be his own inventions. He states in the afterword that he had originally intended to write this story as a historical novel, and I think these insertions are the remaining vestiges of that change. In my opinion it detracts a little, but since it was fairly obvious whenever he was doing it is was easy enough to separate the history from the creative license.

Still and all, highly recommended by this dork.