Dr. Morison was an outstanding historian and a wonderful writer. I think all of the series 14 history books (and 1 book given as a general index) are intimate and readable and bring the tragedies and victories and good and bad happenings with an intensity that brings WW II back to life. Americans who want to learn about sacrifices made by the men of our Navy should read at a minimum book V,"The Struggle for Guadalcanal". Between August 9 and November 30 there were 6 full scale naval actions, and we got the worst of several of them. But somehow our men held on and ultimately won the campaign. These books have my strongest recommendation!

No doubt naval operations are obscure and technical to the average reader. Samuel Eliot Morison's breezy, near first person account of WWII naval activities with emphasis on Pacific operations certainly brings hostory to life. One can hardly question his sources. He participated in many of the engagements he wrote about and frequently interviewed the officers present immediately after the operations. His work generated the TV series "Victory At Sea", whose episode names often mirror chapter or volume names of the set.

I am sure Morison's chummy relationship with Roosevelt, Stark and Leahy color his opinion of some of the more flamboyant (or Republican) officers. Morison's work is also firmly rooted in the 1930s-1940s egalitarian belief that the guy at the "pointy end" deserved praise equal to his superiors.

This reader believes it is now time for a more dispassionate analysis of the strategy, tactics, and materiel which won the naval war for America. These titanic battles have never been quantitatively analyzed and technical summaries available in archives have seldom been included in a public offering on the war.

This criticism does not detract from Morison's titanic work. It places a human face on war in a way not seen before.

This is the definitive history of US Naval ops in the second world war. It is very well written. Morison was a Harvard history professor interested in maritime matters who FDR appointed in April 1942 as official naval historian and comissioned in the USNR. During the rest of the war Morison worked on the history full time, spending about half the time at sea with various elements of the fleet. The series was published volume by volume until completed in the early 1960s.

When these books were written, the allied successes in breaking axis codes were still secret, so the full reasons behind many command decisions could not be discussed. On occasion this forced Morison into a little obsfucation. So long as the reader is aware that some crucial signals intelligence could not be mentioned, it makes little difference to the work as a whole.

History, intriging information on Elliot Ness and murder come together in the wake of a political election that makes Cleveland history. As a decendent of Frank Dolezal framed for the "Torso murders" this book hits home. The crime remains unsolved to this day....Can you figure out this "Who done it"? while everyone has theories it has yet to be proven who killed 13 people in the late 1930's. This book and story is as alive today as it was over 60 years ago. A must read!

In the 1930s over a dozen murders were attributed to the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run", a ravine that runs through Cleveland Ohio and contains this stream and railroad yards. Most of these bodies were unidentified: headless, the arms, legs, and torso were cut up by someone who knew anatomy or butchering. It was never solved, altho one suspect was made to confess, repudiated this confession, and then found a suicide in jail. Such serial murders were rare in America; earlier serial murderers did it for money and left this trail. No motive was ever established for these murders. Most sex murderers are the product of large cities, which have anonymous victims or perpetrators. Chapter Eleven summarizes these cases.

This book is about the later career of Eliot Ness. After Chicago, he was put in charge of the Alcoholic Tax Unit of norther Ohio. He cleaned out bootleggers, hitting a still every day. Organized crime made Cleveland a safe haven for criminals on the run. Corruption had spread everywhere; neighborhood crime had greatly increased. Harold Burton became mayor, and chose Eliot Ness as Director of Public Safety to oversee the police and firemen. (Burton later became a Senator, a friend of Truman, and was appointed to the Supreme Court.) The ineffectiveness of the police was due to widespread corruption and complacency. With Prohibition gone, Ness prosecuted gambling and union racketeering. Ness cultivated a good relationship with reporters, and got favorable publicity. He tried to purge corrupt policemen but was met with silence. Then a police captain was caught in a cemetery lot racket. Another owned a restaurant which fronted for a gambling room. The bodies found in Kingsbury Run highlighted the corruption.

Cleveland had been the worst city (after Los Angeles) for traffic deaths and injuries. Ness purged the traffic division, began arresting drunk drivers, prosecuted ticket fixing, gave harsher penalties for unpaid fines, and started tougher automobile inspections. Ness promoted traffic safety with a public awareness campaign. He began an Emergency Patrol with first aid training to reach any accident within two minutes. This cut traffic deaths by half, and he received national recognition. Some of the increased traffic fines were put back into the police budget. Squad cars now had two-way radios. A single phone call brought police assistance within 60 seconds. Ness was criticized for wasting tax dollars, but in one year overall crime dropped 38%, robberies by 50%! Public success was followed by private problems: divorce, late night socializing, stories of drinking.

Ness later resigned to join the Federal Social Protection Program during WW 2. Afterwards, he became a businessman but was not successful. His campaign for Mayor of Cleveland flopped. He later met Oscar Fraley and began to write his book. Just before its publication, Ness died of a heart attack; he never knew of its success.

Not long after his "Untouchables" days, Eliot Ness experienced many successes as Public Safety Director of Cleveland (OH). Unfortunately, capturing the 'Torso Murderer' was not among them. A relatively little known crime, this serial killer haunted Ness' time in Cleveland. This book is both a look at Ness himself after his Chicago accomplishments, and an examination of one of America's greatest unsolved serial killings. If you are interested in either subject, this is an excellent purchase.

This probably qualifies as the strangest book i've read all year. I was reminded of Williams by reading C.S. Lewis's letters; i had read one of his books before, "Descent into Hell" i think, and remembered the strangeness, but this really is amazing. How many other books do you know in which one of the two main characters is dead, in which the dead and living can communicate almost as easily as we do every day, in which magic is serious and scary? Mainstream books, that is, not Goosebumps, with an introduction by T.S. Eliot, with the whole thing to be understood as at least feasible if not truth. This is unusual. And yet, and yet the whole thing works. It is the story of two dead women, killed during an air raid on war-torn London, and the choices they make ~ or the choices they made while alive ~ and how they affect the world of the still living. It is also the story of an evil (American) magus, Simon, who practises (actually, he's very good at it) real black magic. His desire to rule the world, and the plan he has to use his daughter to gain the power to do so, is in the end defeated by Lester, one of the dead women, her husband, his friend, and the friend's fiancée ~ Simon the Clerk's daughter. The evil is real, overbearing, even, though it is bizarre; one gets the idea that all the Clerk does is feasible, that Williams has experienced evil in his life, that he knows whereof he writes. The descriptions of the dead, of the City they inhabit (both London and not-London), are also real, persuasive; Williams must have had some foreknowledge, one feels, to write the way he wrote. Reading him takes quite an investment, of time, of thought, of disbelief suspension; it is, however, well worth the cost: The payoff is a gripping book, plenty of thought, and a clearer vision of life. I shall have to read another Williams, but perhaps not too soon.

Published in 1945 and still in print, this is the last of the novels of Charles Williams, who along with J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis was one of the Oxford literary group the Inklings. The recent increase in popularity of his fiction, initially boosted by his association with the Inklings, is probably due to the current success of the Frank Peretti thrillers, and the LaHaye-Jenkins 'Left Behind' series. However, in contrast to the current populists Mr Williams is intellectually quite a demanding read.

All Hallows Eve is another Williams ghost story, gently told in his own highly unorthodox style. Two young women have been killed in an accident in the aftermath of the WWII air raids on London, but their ghostly participation in the story is as real as that of any of the living people. It is probably fair to say that this novel, as with most Charles Williams fiction, is not recommended for the overly sensitive person, and could easily be misinterpreted the overly hasty.

Simon LeClerk is a powerful mage, more a Saruman than a Gandalf, and his plan is domination of this world and - more worryingly - any other that he can access. His adoring acolytes form the powerbase of his support for a new world religion. Betty, daughter of one of these acolytes, is the unwilling dupe of the magician, and the key subject in his most daring and horrible experiment. An artist is the bereaved husband of Evelyn, one of the ghosts, and a civil servant is Betty's intended husband.

The characters have depth and robust individual style. While many an author can paint real villains doing convincingly bad things, Williams is unusual in that his good characters and their goodness are equally if not more convincing. Their goodness is genuinely felt and is strongly attractive. There is no hint that the villains have all the fun or that the author really has little idea of how to portray true goodness, or even what it is.

From this novel I also gained a valuable insight into the true nature and function of art. Rather like 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', two of the artist's paintings play a pivotal part in the story. The artist manages in one picture to catch and portray something of a hidden truth about the city of London, and in the other something about the magician himself (who approves of the picture). As these things could not be captured by any mere photograph, the art has to say what can best be said, or perhaps only be said, in a painting.

Whatever your ideas of heaven and hell, they will never be the same after reading Charles Williams. Whether the new images will be comfortable or not is another question. In some ways Williams's picture of heaven is, if anything, more frightening than the conventional depiction of hell. It's certainly considerably more compelling. His dead protagonist was one scared woman--and so was I, for most of the novel. In "All Hallows' Eve" Williams gives his eschatological images expression in their leanest, purest form, mingled with other terrific and similarly life-threatening images of the war that was then engulfing the world. Read it!

Romola is constantly called Eliot's weakest novel, with even serious critics reluctant to praise it. However, it was seen in the 19th century as Eliot's masterpiece. Some of the blame for the novel going out of fashion must rest with F.R. Leavis who said that "few will want to read Romola a second time, and few can ever have got through it once without some groans." If Leavis, viewed as one of the great literary minds, thinks this, then more average readers like us are bound to be put off.

True, the start of Romola is bogged down in detail, but it is introduced by a wonderful, stirring and majestic 'Proem' which sees the Angel of the Dawn sweeping across the Earth and loftily states how humanity is the same now as it was when Romola is set. After this, the notes are best ignored - consult them separately, and concentrate on getting into the book. It is a stirring and sometimes hard read, and moves one with awe at what Eliot has created - you really feel you are experiencing Florence in the 15th century. There is one scene that stands out for me - the haunting and almost surreal episode where Romola drifts by boat to an apparent coastal haven. Images of peace and life are reversed disturbingly.

So ignore Leavis and the dissenters. If you've read another Eliot, you'll like it. If you haven't, maybe start with something else, but come back, for it's a rewarding read

Given the majority of Eliot readers begin with Middlemarch, I found myself in the unique position of not only beginning with Romola, but also on a subject that I find most interesting. That of Renaissance Italy. Beginning at the death of the great Lorenzo di Medici in '92 I read this great novel twice. Once quickly as any other Twenty-First century paperback; the second, slowly, with more respect for the intellectual scope within the pages.
After the first attempt I was mildly disappointed. I came away with no true sense of the whole that is fifteenth century Florence and a bewilderment at the inconsistent central characterisation of Tito Melema and his golden-haired wife, Romola. The supporting actors were brilliant, from Fra Girolama's fantatical Catholicism to Bratti's salesmanship. But I was left disappointed, believing in the superficality of Tito, the maddening naivety of Tessa, and the almost puritanical martyrdom of Romola.
So I re-read it. Slowly.
It is now extremely clear why this great work of english literature is, as Eliot herself puts it, a "book of mine which I more thoroughly feel that I swear by every sentence as having been written with my best blood".
Each scene is mesmerically depicted, the infintesimal attention to details and Eliot's total control of her subject matter shines through.
Renaissance Florence wasn't so well depicted by its contemporaries.
From Tito's waking at the Loggia de' Cerchi to his final fall at the Ponte Vecchio his character moves through a full range as you would expect from a man in his early twenties. His child-like mesmerism coupled with his Greek tutorage gives rise to a cherubic man whom Florence loves. His fatal flaw is his desire for love and a single terrible lie he gives that, like Murphy's Law, evolves into a a stigma that alters his very persona. What is all the more damaging is that you truly believe he is unaware of the pain he causes. He is truly egocentric, in an almost blameless way. For Romola, you cold argue the opposite. Indeed she is potentially more culpable. Her fierce intellectualism is offset by a descent into a world of religious supersition, a world where religion is used as a political tool. Throughout she has the knowledge of where her actions will take her and a terrible sense of duty and restrains her. From the beginning, with the story we hear so often of Tito's escape from drowning, to his final near drowning at the hands of the mob, to his strangulation by his father there is a certain bitter justice until all that he leaves is his proud and world-scarred wife Romola and the innocence that he preserved with Tessa. Tito's move from innocent 'hero' to startled villain is an excerise in human failings. Yet it is not a sufficient single human tragedy, as Eliot says, "Florence was busy with greater affairs, and the preparation of a deeper tragedy".
In many respects 'Romola' is Eliot's King Lear. The parallels are many, including Baldessare's depiction. There is no Edgar, nor Edmund but the Fool is here in many guises. In taking one of Shakespeare's finest themes, Eliot has given true life to fifteenth century Florence and it is, perhaps, best encapsulated by Romola's final statement to Tessa's son, Lillo:
"There was a man to whom I was very near... who made almost everyone fond of him, for he ws young, and clever, and beautiful...I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds - such as make men infamous."
So, Eliot's 'Romola'. Read it, delight in it because it truly is, as the author can rightly claim, one of the finest works in english literature.

Yes, it bristles with Glossaries and Appendices and Notes like so much barbed wire. (And if you actually read the Penguin editor's introduction, it's a sure thing you'll never read the novel: she makes it sound like about as much fun as chewing rocks.) But don't let all that deter you. You may have some rough going at the beginning, mostly because Latin and Greek scholarship is so important to the plot. Use the notes and they'll enhance your enjoyment of the story, but ignore them and you're still in for a thrilling tale gorgeously told. Tito Melema is one of the great characters in fiction, and he's someone we all know: a thoroughly despicable human being who has no idea he's anything but a nice guy. Eliot has wrought a dreamy and hair-raising hybrid of fiction and history, infused with her own astonishing insight and complicated sympathy and delivered in her matchless prose. I loved this book.

Heimel's first book was good, this one was excellent. Even if you're not a crime-fighing history buff, this chronology of Ness' life strikes an optimistic cord concerning what ultimately matters in life. Ness made plenty of mistakes in his life, but the testimony to man's efforts at doing the right thing is inspirational. He was not the person Hollywood portrayed him to be, but in some sense, he was much, much, more. This second edition is full of new information and insight. Just as you may find that the "professional" movie critics reviews didn't jibe with how you felt about a movie, you'll most likely come to the same conclusion about this book. Read it yourself. It's well worth the effort!

Paul W. Heimel has done a superb job of uncovering and relating the life and times of Eliot Ness, including the role that he and his team of "Untouchables" played in the destruction of Al Capone. Ness was a far more interesting and complex individual than the Hollywood characterizations of him. He was every bit as honest, diligent, and hard-working as his fictional counterpart, but also flawed in terribly human ways. The reader comes away with a deeper understanding of a very real, ultimately tragic human being. Heimel knows how to tell a story well and captures Ness's fascinating life without bogging the tale down in minutia. He provides clear images of Capone and a host of other characters, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The paranoid, delusional "G Man" was a neurotic tyrant who could not stomach Ness getting any publicity or credit, no matter how deserved, because he believed it upstaged him and his agency. Ness even merited one of Hoover's many secret files. Indeed, Ness seems to have been harmed by his own success in destroying crooked cops, politicians, and labor thugs, which inevitably made him enemies. His own inability to convert his exemplary public service into business or political success reveals him as all-too human. His final years, and the lack of any material reward for his deeds, are both moving and tragic. This is a real slice of Americana without any glamorization. Heimel deserves our gratitude for rescuing a wonderful man from both near-obscurity and horrible distortion.

John Frye

If you are looking for an accurate and interesting book about Eliot Ness, this book is definitely for you. As I was reading this book, it was obvious that Paul Heimel researched Eliot Ness's life in depth. Fact and fiction were separated to get an honest look at Ness's life. Also, I didn't feel that he used any exaggerations and he fairly portrayed Ness. He gave Ness credit for his accomplishments and didn't "sugar-coat" Ness's failures. Ness's human side was captured in the book. Thumbs-up to the author Paul Heimel.

Overall, I found the book to be well written and worth one's money if you are a fan, but, as one of his classic songs are entitled, "BEWARE! He may literally make you sick with his grandiose, egotistical, "I am music, I gave music life" persona. He truly believes he is the "Black Sinatra", or as he puts it, singers, before his arrival onto the music scene, were either "stupid", "leeches", or crybabies".

He outright tells Issac Hayes and Lou Rawls that they are not on his level as artists, not to mention that, according to this book, everyone from Muhammad Ali to Michael Jackson were living in darkness until he arrived on the scene and enriched their lives with his sacred wisdom and guidance- as if he was Jesus Christ. He even leads himself to believe that his deciding to do commercials in the 1990's lead to some sudden surge of black artists being offered commercial endorsements, citing B.B. King and Aretha Franklin- Oh Please Barry! Both Aretha's and B.B's respective careers have endured longer and achievements are far greater than yours. And by the way, they were singing jingles before you came on the scene.

The most sickening moment, however, has to be his comments in regards to the late, great, Marvin Gaye, whom he appears convinced he could have straightened out- And, of course, Marvin begged him to produce him!

Throughout the book, he makes numerous suggestions as to the many artists who have come to him asking him to produce them. Funny thing though, outside of his groups, Love Unlimited (Orchestra), he has never!

Not suprisingly, he also fails to mention that his big comeback hit, 1994's "Practice What You Preach", was actually written and produced by Gerald Levert. So Barry, that, my friend, was the key to the success of your album, "The Icon is Love". And boy, isn't it strange, after reading this memoir, you will have to ask yourself, "If everyone was worshipping Barry, who was listening to Luther? Just a thought.

Barry is much too full of himself- literally and philosophically. If you can stomach his overly inflated ego, you actually may enjoy this book!

Here is a man who was, for a brief moment, in the company of Malcolm X, got jacked around by his first record label and is able to shrug it off and learn from it, and pass along his wisdom and the benefits of his experiences both to his peers in the entertainment field and to the world at large through this wonderful, insightful, inspirational book. How refreshing it is to see such honesty in such a large package!

Update: the Maestro died tonight, July 4, 2003. Get this book, however you can get it, if you truly want to understand the drive it takes to come from nothing and make something of yourself. Iris Gross Georg

I have also enjoyed Barry's music since the 70's and I am glad to see how he shared such a warm story with us. You know, it only takes something that can change a person's life either for the good or bad, for him it was Elvis' "It's Now or Never" Read and enjoy!

To me, it is of great interest in itself to read about the lives of these seven remarkable individuals. Gardner gives us an account of their lives looking through the window of his theories on creativity. While not 100% convincing in all that he proposes, sometimes resorting to seeing what he wants to see (rather than reporting what he sees), Creating Minds is a valuable attempt at identifying the nature of creativity. I think the book fails to provide a case for the argument that creativity is characterized by "a special amalgam of the childlike and the adultlike." As long as the following question goes unanswered it's only too tempting to rush to conclusions: Do creative individuals retain childlike qualities more than other people, and how exactly do they benefit from doing so? This question epitomizes my general unease with Gardner's study of creativity. If we only look at creative people, how can we understand in which ways and how they stand apart from 'normal people'? Finally, I am not so sure about the significance of that modern era talk.

This book examines the creative process by reviewing the lives of seven highly creative people. I enjoyed the seven mini-biographies, but the attempts to generalize from them seemed ponderous. Some of Dr. Gardner's generalizations seem overly broad, some don't seem to be universally true even among the seven individuals he studied, and in any case seven cases isn't enough to generalize from with much confidence.

This book reminded me of Eric Erickson's biography of Gandhi, which I read years ago with great interest. Erickson's theories about the life cycle and how it applied to Gandhi's life were more satisfying to me than Gardner's generalizations.

There is an excellent 1955 film (Le Mystere Picasso) that shows time-lapse photography of Picasso's work in progress. The film helped me to feel better about my own frequent revisions when writing. It is available on DVD from a French company, Cinestore.com.

This is one of the most enjoyable as well as one of the most informative books I have read in recent years. I have long admired Gardner's work, especially his research on multiple intelligences which he discusses in other works such as Intelligence Reframed (2000), Frames of Mind (1993), and Multiple Intelligences (also 1993). As Gardner explains in the Preface, this volume" represents both a culmination and a beginning: a culmination in that it brings together my lifelong interests in the phenomena of creativity and the particulars of history; a beginning in that introduces a new approach to the study of human creative endeavors, one that draws on social-scientific as well as humanistic traditions." Specifically, this "new approach" begins with the individual but then focuses both on the particular "domain," or symbol system, in which an individual functions and on the group of individuals, or members of what Gardner calls the "field," who judge the quality of the new work in the domain.

This is the approach he takes when analyzing the lives and achievements of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. Throughout the book, Gardner makes brilliant use of both exposition (e.g. analysis, comparison and contrast) and narration (especially when examining causal relationships of special significance) to reveal, explain, and evaluate each of the seven geniuses.

Gardner sets for himself several specific objectives:

• "First, I seek to enter into the worlds that each of the seven figures occupied during the period under investigation -- roughly speaking, the half century from 1885 to 1935."

• "In so doing, I hope to illuminate the nature of their own particular, often peculiar, intellectual capacities, personality configurations, social arrangements, and creative agendas, struggles and accomplishments."

• Also, "I seek conclusions about the nature of the Creative Enterprise writ large. I believe that if we can better understand the breakthroughs achieved by the individuals deliberately drawn from diverse domains, we should be able to tease out the principles that govern creative human activity, wherever it arises."

• Finally, "I seek conclusions about the sparkling, if often troubled, handful of decades that I term 'the modern era'...Such a selection [of the seven during the half-century period] allows me to comment not only on [their] particular achievemnents...but also on the times that formed them, and that they in turn helped to define."

Gardner achieves all of these objectives while somehow maintaining a delicate balance between respecting (indeed celebrating) individual genius and explaining the relevance (to each of the seven) of three relationships which are common to them all: the relationship between what he calls the "child" and the "master" throughout human development; the relationship between an individual and the work in which he or she is engaged; and finally, the relationship between the individual and other persons in his or her world.

Of special interest to me is Gardner's acknowledgment that two themes emerged during the course of his research for this book which he had not anticipated when he began. Citing a "confidant" relationship with Fleiss from whom Freud received "sustenance" when he needed it most, Gardner gradually realized that a relationship of this kind, "far from being an isolated case," represents the "norm" among the other six. Besso played much the same role for Einstein, Braque for Picasso, the Diaghilev circle for Stravinsky, Pound for Eliot, Horst for Graham, and Anasyra Sarabhai for Gandhi.

Gardner cites what he calls "the Faustian bargain" as the second theme which emerged unexpectedly during his research. This subject is much too complicated to be summarized in a review such as this. Suffice to note now that inorder to maintain their gifts and continue their work, the seven creators "went through behaviors or practices of a fundamentally superstitious, irrational, or compulsive nature," thereby sacrificing normal relationships with family members and friends. "The kind of bargain may vary, but the tenacity with which it is maintained seems consistent." I intend to keep these two themes in mind when I re-read this extraordinary book.

After seeing the book here on Amazon I thought I wanted it. While looking for another book at the local library I found this book in it's revised and updated edition. I was sadly disappointed. It is more a travellog than a how-to on gardening. I read several other similar books and the best one I found was "Solar Gardening" by Leandre Poisson from Chelsea Green.

Eliot Coleman's fine book has given rise to a gentle whisper deep in my thoughts. That whisper says, "Fresh veggies - in the winter! And it's not even difficult..." I find myself daydreaming about winter gardening, planting winter crops in my imagination, planning beds and trellises and cold frames full to bursting with delicious greens. I entertain the radical notion of a four-season independence from boring, tasteless supermarket vegetables for the price of a very small effort.

This wonderful book tells you everything you need to know about four-season harvesting, provides planting dates for a broad variety of garden delicacies, and shares tried and true labor-saving methods. It will inspire you and inform you! An excellent reference, a good choice for a beginnner, and a perfect gift for the avid gardener.

This book is really wonderful. I've owned it for several years and have also had reliable winter harvests in Maine (where I used to live). It has also really expanded my awareness of good things to eat fresh from my garden.

Coleman presents his ideas clearly and with plenty of pictures. This is really critical. Using the diagrams in the book, I was easily able to build a cold frame from scrap board. No mean feat, as I am not the most accomplished builder.

The only drawback to the book, which is pretty minor, is the size of the hardiness zone map in the back. I would have much preferred it to be larger and in color.

If you are looking for a baseball page turner, this book is tough to put down. But if you are looking for the real life baseball insights found in Bouton's classic "Ball Four" you won't find them here.

Bouton and Asinof's "Strike Zone" is a surprisingly good book. I didn't think that a novel written in alternating chapters by two authors would even be readable, much less absorbing, but this book is both. The two parallel story-lines are simple but affecting: a journeyman pitcher's efforts in a crucial game and the plate umpire's moral dilemma about whether or not to define the strike zone in a way that will "throw" the game and thus allow an old friend to pay off a gambling debt. The action takes place in one 24-hour period, but with flashbacks effectively
worked in to fill out the two men's lives. Particularly when the action moves to the baseball diamond, the novel perfectly captures both the leisurely pace and rhythms and the terrific tensions of the game.

Anyone who's read "Ball Four" would know that the pitcher, Sam Ward, is closely based on Bouton himself--all the stuff about knuckleballs is a tip-off--and the stone wall building as therapy after a marital separation comes directly out of Bouton's own experience, as described in the Epilogue to "Ball Four." Sam Ward is Bouton in the same way that Father Blackie Riley is a kind of fantasy stand-in for Father Andrew Greeley in the latter's novels.

Maybe the most difficult thing to write in a novel is a good sex scene and Bouton succeeds with what seems like unpromising material: an anecdote about Ward relieving his pre-game tensions by masturbating in his hotel room before going to the ballpark to pitch. Bouton spares the reader any description of what Ward is actually doing; instead he recounts in rapid succession the series of vivid fantasies that pass through his character's mind, then ends with a humorous zinger that picks up a punch line from earlier in the story. The episode is very sexy (as well as romantic, since he's fantasizing about his estranged wife) and very funny--a rare combination that few writers could capture so successfully.

Not a great book, but a worthwhile read for baseball lovers. (I think the pitch-by-pitch description of the crucial game would drive non-fans out of their minds!)

"Strike Zone" is a book that tells the story of a pitcher of the Chicago Cubs named Sam Ward. Sam is a middle-aged guy who has never pitched a major league game before. Sam gets the chance to pitch for one of the Cubs biggest games of the year. Sam and the umpire Ernie Kolacka tell the story; the chapters go on in detail about everything that is going on from their point of view.

The authors of this book really went into detail about everything, making the book more understandable. A bad thing about the detail is the it makes the book longer than it should have been, because the book takes place in a twenty-four hour period and there is so much detail it made it kind of drag on. "Strike Zone" is very well-written and things are written as if one could actually see them. The authors convey their purpose very well by telling every single detail, but once again a little too much detail can be bad.