OCTOBER 1964 by David Halberstam

 

“October 1964 should be a hit with old-time baseball fans, who’ll relish the opportunity to relive that year’s to-die-for World Series, when the dynastic but aging New York Yankees squared off against the upstart St. Louis Cardinals. It should be a hit with younger students of the game, who’ll eat up the vivid portrayals of legends like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the Yankees and Bob Gibson and Lou Brock of the Cardinals. Most of all, however, David Halberstam’s new book should be a hit with anyone interested in understanding the important interplay between sports and society.”
–The Boston Globe

“Compelling…1964 is a chronicle of the end of a great dynasty and of a game, like the country, on the cusp of enormous change.”
–Newsweek

“Halberstam’s latest gives us the feeling of actually being there–in another time, in the locker rooms and in the minds of baseball legends. His time and effort researching the book result in a fluency with his topic and a fluidity of writing that make the reading almost effortless….Absorbing.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Wonderful…Memorable…Halberstam describes the final game of the 1964 series accurately and so dramatically, I almost thought I had forgotten the ending.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“Superb reporting…Incisive analysis…You know from the start that Halberstam is going to focus on a large human canvas…One of the many joys of this book is the humanity with which Halberstam explores the characters as well as the talents of the players, coaches and managers. These are not demigods of summer but flawed, believable human beings who on occasion can rise to peaks of heroism.”
–Chicago Sun-Times

OCTOBER 1864 BY DAVID HALBERSTAM

 

October 1964

David Halberstam

4.19

5,933 ratings337 reviews

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * THE BEST SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR

October 1964 should be a hit with old-time baseball fans, who'll relish the opportunity to relive that year's to-die-for World Series, when the dynastic but aging New York Yankees squared off against the upstart St. Louis Cardinals. It should be a hit with younger students of the game, who'll eat up the vivid portrayals of legends like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the Yankees and Bob Gibson and Lou Brock of the Cardinals. Most of all, however, David Halberstam's new book should be a hit with anyone interested in understanding the important interplay between sports and society.
--The Boston Globe

Compelling...1964 is a chronicle of the end of a great dynasty and of a game, like the country, on the cusp of enormous change.
--Newsweek

Halberstam's latest gives us the feeling of actually being there--in another time, in the locker rooms and in the minds of baseball legends. His time and effort researching the book result in a fluency with his topic and a fluidity of writing that make the reading almost effortless....Absorbing.
--San Francisco Chronicle

Wonderful...Memorable...Halberstam describes the final game of the 1964 series accurately and so dramatically, I almost thought I had forgotten the ending.
--The Washington Post Book World

Superb reporting...Incisive analysis...You know from the start that Halberstam is going to focus on a large human canvas...One of the many joys of this book is the humanity with which Halberstam explores the characters as well as the talents of the players, coaches and managers. These are not demigods of summer but flawed, believable human beings who on occasion can rise to peaks of heroism.
--Chicago Sun-Times

GenresBaseballSportsNonfictionHistoryAmerican HistoryAudiobookNew York 

382 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

---

427 people are currently reading

3472 people want to read

---

MISSING SAM BY THRITY UMRIGAR

 

When Aliya and Samantha have a fight one night, Samantha goes for a run early the next morning—and doesn’t come back. 

Aliya reports her wife Samantha as missing, but as a gay and Muslim daughter of immigrants, she’s immediately suspected by her neighbors in Samantha's disappearance. Scared and furious and feeling isolated as everyone around her doubts her innocence, Aliya makes one wrong choice after another. All the while, Samantha is being held captive, strategizing how to escape before things escalate even more. Meanwhile, Aliya must fight to prove her innocence in the public eye and save her wife. But is safety ever truly possible for these women even after Samantha is rescued?

A provocative examination of suburban mores, Missing Sam captures the terror manifested in today’s political climate, and the real dangers, both physical and psychological, of being Brown and queer in America.

MISCHLING BY AFFINITY KONAR

 Pearl is in charge of: the sad, the good, the past.

Stasha must care for: the funny, the future, the bad.

It's 1944 when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood.

As part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo, the girls experience privileges and horrors unknown to others, and they find themselves changed, stripped of the personalities they once shared, their identities altered by the burdens of guilt and pain.

That winter, at a concert orchestrated by Mengele, Pearl disappears. Stasha grieves for her twin, but clings to the possibility that Pearl remains alive. When the camp is liberated by the Red Army, she and her companion Feliks--a boy bent on vengeance for his own lost twin--travel through Poland's devastation. Undeterred by injury, starvation, or the chaos around them, motivated by equal parts danger and hope, they encounter hostile villagers, Jewish resistance fighters, and fellow refugees, their quest enabled by the notion that Mengele may be captured and brought to justice within the ruins of the Warsaw Zoo. As the young survivors discover what has become of the world, they must try to imagine a future within it.

A superbly crafted story, told in a voice as exquisite as it is boundlessly original, Mischling defies every expectation, traversing one of the darkest moments in human history to show us the way toward ethereal beauty, moral reckoning, and soaring hope.

BECOMING EVE BY ABBY CHAVA STEIN

 

Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. 

But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. 

Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?

WE WOULD NEVER BY TOVA MIRVIS

 

No one is more surprised than Hailey Gelman when she comes under suspicion for the murder of her soon-to-be ex-husband Jonah. Hailey—nicknamed Sunshine by her mother for her bright outlook and ever-present smile—is the peacemaker who has always tried to do what her family expects of her. 

The months leading up to Jonah’s death have been fraught, including a bitter separation and a messy custody battle over their young daughter, Maya. When Hailey files a motion to relocate to Florida so she can be near her family, the divorce begins to escalate, drawing in all the members of Hailey’s family, who are determined to help her however they can. 

Most invested is Sherry, Hailey’s mother who wants nothing more than to be close to her family. Then there’s Nate, Hailey’s devoted and protective older brother, as well as the patriarch, Solomon, who is keeping a secret of his own that threatens the stability and security Sherry has worked so hard to maintain. As the divorce spirals dangerously out of control, they are all forced to consider just how far they will go for each other. 

Part gripping mystery, part compassionate family drama, We Would Never explores what people are capable of when they feel cornered, and how, in the absence of forgiveness, love and hate can intertwine and turn deadly.

MAKE ME COMMISSIONER BY JANE LEAVY

 

Jane Leavy has always loved the game of baseball. Her grandmother lived one long, loud foul ball away from Yankee Stadium—the same grandmother who took young Jane to Saks Fifth Avenue and bought her her first baseball glove. It's no coincidence that Leavy was covering the game she loved for the Washington Post by the late 1970s. As a pioneering female sportswriter, she eventually turned her talent to books, penning three of the all-time best baseball biographies about three of the all-time best players in Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth. But when she went searching for a fourth biographical subject, she realized that baseball had faltered. The Moneyball era of the last two decades obsessed over data and slowed the game down to a crawl, often at the expense of thrills, skills, and surprise. Major League Baseball has begun to address issues too long ignored by establishing a pitch clock and altering rules to speed up the game and amplify the action. The league is investing in developmental youth baseball programs in disadvantaged communities where participation and fandom have plummeted. No one yet knows how to keep pitching arms healthy but Leavy has some ideas.

Yet the questions how much have these efforts helped and how much more can be done to improve the game and reassert its place in American culture? Leavy takes a whirlwind tour of the country seeking answers to those questions, talking with luminaries like Joe Torre, Dave Roberts, Jim Palmer, Dusty Baker, Alex Bregman, Yu Darvish, Marquis Grissom, stadium architect Janet Marie Smith, statistical guru Bill James, fantasy baseball creator Dan Okrent, ageless pitching raconteur Bill “Spaceman” Lee, and the entertainers behind baseball’s social media phenomenon The Savannah Bananas. What Leavy uncovers is not only what’s wrong with baseball—and how to fix it—but also what’s right with baseball, and how it illuminates characters, tells stories, and fires up the imagination of those who love it and everyone who could discover it anew.