While watching the hit war movie, "Saving Private Ryan," I had a vivid flash memory of a book I had read a few months ago. It was "China Spy" by Maury and Janet Allen. The linkage should not have surprised me. The hero of the Allen book isn't fiction ... he was a young Irish-American paratrooper who fought bravely and ... like Steven Spielberg's fictional Private Ryan, survived the blood bath of WWII in Europe. Unlike Private Ryan, the idealistic Private McDermott of Yonkers, NY joined the CIA after the war and went to China as a businessman-spy. Betrayed by his bride and arrested by the Chinese Communists as he was walking up the gangplank of a a U.S.-bound steamship to come home, the young man is imprisoned. The Chinese communists want him to sign a confession for propaganda purposes. He refuses. Other prisoners who "confess" to spy charges are released. But this young patriot refuses to betray his country. He is tortured for years and finally dies from the brutal treatment. Other westerners imprisoned at the same time recall how this young real life hero underwent horrible torture rather than betray his country. A cynic can argue, "why die for reasons that are out of date a few decades later?" A thoughtful American citizen can counter, "If and when history thrusts you or me in the meatgrinder of a battlefield or the horror of an enemy prison, you will find out who you really are ... even if the world forgets you.

Every perceptive person should read "China Spy." The tragic irony of the death of a now-forgotten young hero deserves to be remembered amid the box office buzz of a excellently-crafted cinematic tale. "China Spy" is the reality of one man's terrible choice and sacrifice. "Saving Private Ryan" is a war monument on film, emblematic of the sacrifice of millions of men. Today the Cold War is history and China is one of America's favorite trading partners. I thank the Allens for their "China Spy" They remembered ... and now so will their readers.

The saga of Hugh Francis Redmond is a modern Greek tradegy- a silently heroic figure trapped by the fates in a struggle over which he has no understanding or control. Magnifiently written with the best descritpion of young soldiers going into battle I've ever read. Maury Allen is never maudlin and yet the impact of his writing puts the reader at the scene with clear sharp details which tap the strongest emotions. A must for anyone interested in the human dynamics of wartime and the mysteries of modern politics.

THE MICK HAS BEEN THE HERO IN MY LIFE FOR 35 YEARS. THIS BOOK IS AN EXCELLENT ACCOUNT OF HIS CAREER IN PICTURES AND NARRATION. MR. ALLEN SHOWS THE GREATNESS OF MICK AS A PLAYER AND THE HUMANESS OF HIM AS A PERSON. THIS BOOK IS A MUST FOR EVERYONE WHO WORSHIPPED THE MICK. HE IS STILL A HERO AND A VERY BRAVE MAN WHO WAS AT HIS BEST NEAR THE END OF HIS LIFE. HATS OFF TO THE MICK AND THIS WONDERFUL ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE AND CAREER. THANK YOU MR. ALLEN.

This was a very good life story of Roger Maris. You get a good look at his early baseball years with the Kansas City Athletics.
He is then traded to the New York Yankees.As a result of this trade he is able to play on several world championship baseball
teams.The year that Maris broke the all time season homerun record is well covered. You get a good coverage of the day to day events of his life until he breaks the record of 60 homeruns
set by Babe Ruth. You are also told of the 61st homerun by Maris in good detail. This is a very good book about a record setting
baseball player. Read this. You will enjoy it.

Maury Allen's book is a touching tribute to one of baseball's greatest players. Written in part to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Roger Maris' 61 in '61 home run feat, it honors the tormented athlete with memories from the people who knew him best. Family, friends, and teammates reflect on and remember the man who was loved and hated for toppling Babe Ruth's home run record. Most of the book understandably focuses on the 1961 season and examines his upper Midwest childhood and his post-'61 career from such perspective. While Allen doesn't hesitate to weave Maris' record-breaking year into any stage of the narrative, he is careful to expose a gentler Maris the press actively ignored and defiled. The numerous interviews, including ones from Maris' father and high school coaches as well as players Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mike Shannon, bring great honesty to his tortured character. It also is a strong attempt to redeem a player who in life never rose to the glory he deserved.

This book serves more as a biography of Roger Maris the baseball player and man who broke Babe Ruth's home run record than Roger Maris the person, and there's little on his personal and family life, perhaps echoing on page the private man he was in life. Nevertheless, it more than adequately creates a portrait of a small town hero whose devotion to baseball was never bested by his love for his family and friends.

Maury Allen didn't so much write "Where Have You Gone, Joe Dimaggio?" as he did typed it. A New York sportswriter, Allen simply pastes together rambling, unedited interviews of those who knew Joe D. best, never separating the wheat from the chaff. Subsequently, the book consists mostly of lengthy, word-for-word accounts -- some of them five pages or more -- of long-retired ballplayers. Now old men, the subjects begin talking about Dimaggio but end up meandering into their own less substantial careers and lives. The only insight Allen elicits from his reporting is that the Great Dimaggio was one of baseball's best-ever players. But that's not the true Dimaggio story. Lots of great ballplayers preceded and succeeded the Yankee Clipper. But no one has transcended the sport like Dimaggio to become an American hero and a cultural icon. He maintained a powerful and emotional stronghold on the country's consciousness for nearly 50 years after quitting the game. And that's despite his obsessive demands for privacy. Neither the interviewees nor Allen ever shed any light on why that is. Anyone wanting to know more about Dimaggio, the man and the legend, would be better advised to check out Richard Ben Cramer's forthcoming biography "Joe Dimaggio: A Hero's Life," due in September 1999. A five-page article in "Newsweek" magazine on the occasion of Dimaggio's death offered more depth and insight than Allen's 179-page book.

I loved this book! From the first chapter, where Lefty Gomez is talking about pitching against Joe D when he was only a kid with the San Francisco Seals. and this "amateur" gets two doubles off him, to the parts about Marilyn Monroe, which I think everybody on earth is interested in, this book had me hooked. I couldn't help but wonder how Mr. Allen got such personal and intimate information on the courtship of Marilyn Monroe by Joe. The part about her coming home from a party sad, because it's Christmas time and it's always been a horrible time of year for her, and she opens the door to see a small Christmas tree on her table, with a card from him, and he's sitting in a chair in the corner waiting for her. I found that very touching and emotional. As a reader, it was the most intimate view I've ever had of the two of them, and I will probably always wonder how Mr. Allen was able to get stuff like that, when I KNOW DiMaggio refused to talk about her, ever. All of Joe's teammates, from Lefty Gomez and Bill Dickey to Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle told the most revealing stories about Joe and his life on the field and off the field with the Yankees. That was great reading. The clubhouse man, Pete Sheehy, told one of the funniest stories about DiMaggio when he described the day the Clipper showed him a bruise on his backside and asked Mr. Sheehy where he thought the bruise originated from. "Joe," Mr. Sheehy said, "That's from all the guys kissing your backside." What a great read!

Rabid Yankee fan that I am, I bought this book expecting a fascinating overview of the Steinbrenner era with some new insights and perspectives. I got neither.

Maury Allen was without question a talented sportswriter in his prime, but this ranks as the worst written sports history book I have ever read. It soon becomes clear that Allen's book isn't the product of extensive research but merely personal reminiscences and meanderings that offer very little sense of depth or substance about this period at all. Allen's most gripping chapter is his first one concerning his eyewitness perspective on the Fritz Peterson-Mike Kekich "wife swap". After that, it's all downhill with skimpy warmed over rehashings of things I've read about in so many better written books.

Along the way, when Allen skimps over the seasons and games of the period he's supposedly writing about he wanders off into annoying digressions about players of the 50s Brooklyn Dodgers, or the early 60s Mets, or Richie Ashburn, or being rude to Richard Nixon in 1969, none of which has anything to do with the Steinbrenner era. And on top of that, he gets so many basic facts wrong that after awhile it really gets annoying. There's trouble in the opening when he has the Mets beating Houston instead of Arizona in last year's postseason! On another occasion he describes Dave Righetti's 1983 no-hitter as the first at Yankee Stadium since 1951 (uh Maury, what about Don Larsen?) Don Mattingly is described as the first Yankee captain since Thurman Munson (Graig Nettles, Willie Randolph and Ron Guidry held the position after Munson and before Mattingly). Tony Horton is described as playing for Boston and being victimized by Steve Hamilton's "Folly Floater" in Fenway Park (Horton played for Cleveland and the incident happened at Yankee Stadium). Don Mattingly's eight game HR streak is described as happening at a time when the Yankees were "going nowhere" in 1987 (They were in first place at the time).

This book is for completists only. As a comprehensive overview of the Steinbrenner era it is neither comprehensive, nor is it much of an overview.

As a Yankee fan who's followed the team during the Steinbrenner era, this book appealed to me as soon as I heard about it. I looked forward to reading behind-the-scenes anecdotes about my favorite players. Unfortunately, this book was so sloppily put together that it was impossible to fully enjoy the stories and experiences that Maury Allen shares.

The biggest problem with this book is that it wasn't carefully edited. The writing is wordy, and the book seems to have been pulled together from various sources without any attention given to transition or flow. The author has a habit of going off on tangents and repeating information; sometimes these repeated passages are located within pages of each other.

I found the content to be strongest when it focused on the Yankee teams of the mid-to-late 1970s, especially the championship teams of 1977 and 1978. Anecdotes about Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, and Thurmon Munson, among others, offer some insight into the atmosphere that surrounded the Yankees during that period. The end of the book seems rushed, however, and less attention was played to the team's more recent history. The book also fails to deliver on its promise of providing a "definitive look" at George Steinbrenner-very little new ground is covered in describing Steinbrenner's personality.

Surely a good editor could have helped the author tighten up his writing and expand the weaker sections. Instead, the reader who actually paid for this book is left feeling cheated. We expect more from a major publisher and a sportswriter who has so many years of experience. Too many corners were cut in producing this book, and although I had some fun reading it, I wouldn't recommend it to even the most avid Yankee fan.

I enjoy reading baseball books that contain stories and anecdotes that don't usually appear in the papers. Allen has amassed a wealth of these stories, and as a baseball fan who is not privy to the "inside story," I found the book extremely interesting and fascinating. Allen rambles through Steinbrenner's 25 years as owner of the Yankees, and, in the process, he relates many wonderful stories about baseball and the people in it. Some of his tales aren't complimentary, but he's never nasty or spiteful, and I find that refreshing. I recommend the book to anyone who likes baseball and likes to read the stuff that isn't covered by the print and broadcast media. The book was written as an anecdotal anthology, and it succeeds.

Bottom line: for a journalist, Allen understands nothing about baseball. His selections are ludicrous. Rube Marquard over Frank Robinson? Mark Belanger in the top 100 of all time? No way. This book is terrible. I'm very upset I wasted a cent of my money on this. Don't buy it.