Reviews for Runs, Hits and Errors: A Treasury of Cub History and Humor

The average rating for Runs, Hits and Errors: A Treasury of Cub History and Humor based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-07-02 00:00:00 George Ellison Note, June 13, 2015: I edited this review just now to correct a misspelled word. Most of my required textbooks in high school and college didn't make any significant impression on me, and I never bothered to remember the titles or the author's names. This one, though, was different --perhaps mostly because I was fascinated by the subject matter, but also because the authors presented it in an engaging way. (There are undoubtedly later editions; as near as I can tell, though, this one would have been the one I read.) I'd already picked up a lot of basic information about world history, from my own reading of kid's history books, as well as high school; but this was a really engrossing, unified presentation of the whole story, detailed enough to be really educational but condensed enough to be readable. The authors wrote in a jargon-free style, with an eye for telling and vivid details. (They also provided very good, annotated chapter-by-chapter bibliographies --which included some historical novels.) The book gave me a good basic, foundational grasp of history that's always stayed with me (I went on to major in History as an undergraduate), and that I could build on in various directions. I kept the books for years, even though they eventually fell victim to a yard sale we had to have to condense belongings for one of our many moves; but I still wish I'd been able to keep them! In terms of their philosophical perspective, the authors called themselves "chastened children of the Enlightenment" (a good example of the felicitous phrases sprinkled through the book that have stayed with me over the years, like "the stench of a dying democracy" in connection with the waning years of the Roman republic --and the same odor is on the wind in the U.S. today!-- or the description of the 15th century that they quoted from the Dutch historian Huizinga, "the autumn of the Middle Ages"). That is to say, they saw themselves as basically believers in the classical liberal vision of human progress, but with a recognition that it's not unilinear nor inevitable. Their perspective on early humanity was also basically evolutionist. However, on the whole their treatment of history was not highly ideological; they made a clear effort to present all sides of controverted questions and to hew to a mainstream, consensus approach. (Their treatment of Christianity is neutral --but not anti- Christian.) Neither do they overstress any area of history at the expense of others. My understanding of the human past now, from the vantage of nearly forty additional years of study, experience and insight, would be much more colored by interpretation, and considerably different in many emphases, than the one here. But I think mastering that basic neutral framework was an indispensable prelude to building that more interpretive understanding; it provided a factual scaffold that had to precede anything that came later. And I would recommend this book now to anyone who wants to educate himself or herself with the same kind of factual foundation.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-14 00:00:00 YUTAKA NAGASAKI My parents gave me volume one many, many years ago. I've moved it from Texas to Europe to Georgia, Florida and California. It's one book I won't let go -- a good, introduction to world history. It has served me well and I always find something new in it. Great for dipping-in or doing a little background research. Someday I'm going to find volume two