Baseball: An Illustrated History (Used Hardcover) - Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
From Booklist
Baseball comes to PBS? Don't worry, all you public-broadcasting snobs. It's not as bad as it sounds. Your local PBS affiliate hasn't outbid the major networks for the Game of the Week. Instead, Ken Burns, whose Civil War documentary won more than 40 film and television awards, has turned from Bull Run to Bull Durham, producing a new, nine-part video on baseball that will air in the fall. Published in conjunction with the PBS program, this lavishly produced, gorgeously illustrated history of the game rises far above the often dreary companion volume genre. Coauthored by Burns and Geoffrey Ward, the book devotes its nine chapters (or innings, as they're called) to a decade-by-decade survey of the evolution of baseball. Complementing the historical material are more than 500 photos, some in color, and several impressionistic essays by various luminaries including Thomas Boswell and George Will. Perhaps surprisingly, the essays are the only weak link. Yes, baseball inspires us all to flights of rhetorical fancy, but isn't it time to call a moratorium on this sort of thing: America is about hope and renewal. And gloriously, so is baseball, pulsing with the mystery of the seasons and life itself. Thanks for sharing that, John Thorn, but the pictures and the unadorned facts presented here say it far more eloquently. Baseball doesn't need purple prose; the game's faces, names, dates, and numbers carry their own poetry, and Ward and Burns, unlike some of the essayists, wisely avoid the temptation to wax lyrical. Fans will find plenty to quibble about in these pages (too much Mantle; not enough Mays), but with the exception of The Baseball Encyclopedia, there is no better one-volume history of the sport. Bill Ott
Good Condition - previous owner name on cover pages
0425LAW