Best Selling Books by Roger Kahn

Roger Kahn?s first major league hit was a grand slam: The Boys of Summer, his runaway bestseller that immortalized the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Now Kahn does the same for players whose moment in the sun has not yet arrived. Good Enough to Dream is the story of his year as owner of the Class A, very minor leagueøUtica Blue Sox. Most of the Blue Sox will never make it to the majors, but they all share the dream that links the small child in the sandlot with the bonus baby who has just smacked one out of the stadium. It?s a dream Kahn learned from his father and, in the course of a season, passes on to his daughter?hours of practice for a moment of poetry; a hard living but a touch of legend. Good Enough to Dream presents baseball unadorned, a game still sweet enough to lure grown men to leagues where first-class transportation is an old school bus and the infield is likely to be the consistency of thick soup. It is a funny and poignant story of one season and one special team that will make us hesitate before we ever call anything ?bush league? again.

Publisher Description

In Rickey & Robinson, legendary sportswriter Roger Kahn reveals the true, unsanitized account of the integration of baseball-a story that for decades has relied largely on inaccurate, secondhand reports. Focusing on Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, Kahn''s account is based on exclusive reporting and his personal reminiscences, including revelatory material he buried in his notebooks in the ''40s and ''50s. Rickey and Robinson were chiefly responsible for making integration happen. Through in-depth examinations of both men, Kahn separates fact from myth to present a truthful portrait of baseball and its participants at a critical juncture in American history.

From the author of A Season in the Sun, a memoir from one of America''s foremost sportswriters about his life and influences. After successful seasons as a newspaperman and magazine writer, Roger Kahn burst onto the national scene in 1972 with his memorable bestseller, The Boys of Summer, memorializing the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here he wrote a book for the hearts and minds of his readers. Chronicling his own life, Into My Own is Kahn''s reflection on the eight people who shaped him as a man, a father, and a writer. Into My Own is the touching memoir of an unassuming man, whose great love of baseball and literature led him into extraordinary experiences, opportunities, and friendships. Even amidst great family tragedy and personal difficulty, Kahn prevailed—amongst poets, writers, politicians, and most of all, ballplayers. "In this engaging memoir, Kahn...looks back at baseball and much more as he presents his episodic reminiscences as free-form essays arranged loosely around iconic figures from his past...Kahn has a graceful, personal style, full of deftly evoked color and characters, with a bit of the newspaperman''s hard-bitten swagger and a two-fisted liberalism one doesn''t see much anymore."— Publishers Weekly Praise for Roger Kahn "As a kid, I loved sports first and writing second, and loved everything Roger Kahn wrote. As an adult, I love writing first and sports second, and love Roger Kahn even more."—Pulitzer Prize winner, David Maraniss "A work of high moral purpose and great poetic accomplishment. The finest American book on sports."—James Michener on The Boys of Summer "Kahn has the almost unfair gift of easy, graceful writing."— Boston Herald

Acclaimed baseball writer Roger Kahn gives us a memoir of his Brooklyn childhood, a recollection of a life in journalism, and a record of personal acquaintance with the greatest ballplayers of several eras. His father had a passion for the Dodgers; his mother?s passion was for poetry. Somehow, young Roger managed to blend both loves in a career that encompassed writing about sports for the New York Herald Tribune, Sports Illustrated, the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Time. Kahn recalls the great personalities of a golden era?Leo Durocher, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Red Smith, Dick Young, and many more?and recollects the wittiest lines from forty years in dugouts, press boxes, and newsrooms. Often hilarious, always precise about action on the field and off, Memories of Summer is an enduring classic about how baseball met literature to the benefit of both.

“Two legendary figures assume humanity…Poignant, humorous, and convincing.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY To the public, it was a match made in heaven. In private, it was nine months of hell. This is the riveting story of what went wrong with one of the world’s most dazzling romances. His dark jealousy…her need for love. His temper…her affairs. His pride…her ambition. A searing drama of powerfully clashing egos. A tense tragedy of taut emotions and driving passions. And, finally, a bittersweet monument to the devoted friendship that endured despite it all. Praise for Roger Kahn: "As a kid, I loved sports first and writing second, and loved everything Roger Kahn wrote. As an adult, I love writing first and sports second, and love Roger Kahn even more." —Pulitzer Prize winner, David Maraniss "He can epitomize a player with a single swing of the pen." —TIME magazine "Roger Kahn is the best baseball writer in the business." —Stephen Jay Gould, New York Review of Books "Kahn has the almost unfair gift of easy, graceful writing." —BOSTON HERALD

"A rich collection of fifty-one stories and articles by Roger Kahn. Written across six decades, this volume shows Kahn''s ability to describe the athletes he profiled as they truly were in a manner neither compromised nor cruel but always authentic and up close"--

The author of The Boys of Summer writes about an array of legendary figures in this collection of essays and interviews from the late 1950s to the 1970s. "... In the end, the range, like the style, reflects myself. Let the present, then, and the recent past, the ball players, poets, policemen, professors, musicians—in short, these emperors and clowns—stride before you, each hoping, as the author does, to please." Robert Frost, Claudio Arrau, John Lardner, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Leo Durocher, Bobby Thomson, Al Rosen, Jascha Heifetz, and other celebrities in their years of glory, in their times of trial. This is a book about people to be remembered, and what it was like in America at a very special time. "Beautiful...persons and events through the eyes of a sharp, articulate observer."— New York Times "No one else has written a piece so startling about the legend of Babe Ruth...After reading this book you will never feel the same about a lot of legends...A very special book...A book to treasure."— Chicago Sun-Times "Irresistible...You can''t stop reading!"— Chicago Tribune

Provides a look at baseball from the pitcher''s point of view, examining the psychological contest between the pitcher and a batter and the techniques and tactics of some of the game''s finest pitchers, past and present.

Jack Dempsey was perfectly suited to the time in which he fought, the time when the United States first felt the throb of its own overwhelming power. For eight years and two months after World War I, Dempsey, with his fierce good looks and matchless dedication to the kill, was heavyweight champion of the world. A Flame of Pure Fire is the extraordinary story of a man and a country growing to maturity in a blaze of strength and exuberance that nearly burned them to ash. Hobo, roughneck, fighter, lover, millionaire, movie star, and, finally, a gentleman of rare generosity and sincerity, Dempsey embodied an America grappling with the confusing demands of preeminence. Dempsey lived a life that touched every part of the American experience in the first half of the twentieth century. Roger Kahn, one of our preeminent writers about the human side of sport, has found in Dempsey a subject that matches his own manifold talents. A friend of Dempsey''s and an insightful observer of the ways in which sport can measure a society''s evolution, Kahn reaches a new and exciting stage in his acclaimed career with this book. In the story of a man John Lardner called "a flame of pure fire, at last a hero," Roger Kahn finds the heart of America.

"A fine anthology." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY In these essays, written between 1954 and 1990, bestselling author Roger Kahn touches on locker-room controversies and politics, while inviting readers to share in the passion, grace, energy, and intense concentration involved in playing sports. Kahn pays warm tribute to his special heroes, Jackie Robinson, Roger Maris and Carl Furillo, along with those he particularly admired in the press box, John Lardner and Red Smith. Kahn also esteems football lineman Merlin Olsen, hockey goalie Glenn Hall, cager Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, outfielder Mickey Mantle, boxing promoter Don King, and last piece, "Story Without a Hero," about Pete Rose. Praise for Roger Kahn: "As a kid, I loved sports first and writing second, and loved everything Roger Kahn wrote. As an adult, I love writing first and sports second, and love Roger Kahn even more." —Pulitzer Prize winner, David Maraniss "He can epitomize a player with a single swing of the pen." —TIME magazine "Roger Kahn is the best baseball writer in the business." —Stephen Jay Gould, New York Review of Books "Kahn has the almost unfair gift of easy, graceful writing." —BOSTON HERALD

In 1976 Roger Kahn spent an entire baseball season, from spring training through the World Series, with players of every stripe and competence. The result is this book, in which Kahn reports on a small college team?s successes and hopes, a young New England ball club, a failing major league franchise, and a group of heroes on the national stage.

Recounts one of the great summers of baseball history, 1978--the year the Yankees won the World Series after a tumultuous season.

The seventh game of the World Series is about to be played, and more than the world championship is at stake. A man''s destiny is on the line. Johnny Longboat, one of baseball''s greatest pitchers, is taking the mound for the New York Mohawks in what may be his final game. With millions of eyes upon him, only he is aware of the conflicts tormenting him. At forty-one, Johnny is a man trying to make sense of his past while fearing what the future could bring when his playing career ends. As the deciding seventh game of a bitterly fought World Series suspensefully moves, inning by inning, toward its dramatic climax, and before the seventh game is over, Johnny Longboat is ready to make some hard choices. He''s ready to find out just how much strength is left in his arm—and in his soul. Praise for Roger Kahn: "As a kid, I loved sports first and writing second, and loved everything Roger Kahn wrote. As an adult, I love writing first and sports second, and love Roger Kahn even more." —Pulitzer Prize winner, David Maraniss "He can epitomize a player with a single swing of the pen." —Time magazine "Roger Kahn is the best baseball writer in the business." —Stephen Jay Gould, New York Review of Books "A work of high moral purpose and great poetic accomplishment. The finest American book on sports." —James Michener on The Boys of Summer "Kahn has the almost unfair gift of easy, graceful writing." —Boston Herald

Novelist W. P. Kinsella wrote that baseball is "a game where little gems of wisdom or whimsy can be created in the dugout, the bullpen, or the press box during long, hot afternoons and evenings of baseball." The Little Red Book of Baseball Wisdom unearths a treasury of quotes reflecting more than a century''s worth of history from our national pastime. Featuring contributions from Hank Aaron to Walt Whitman, Yogi Berra to John Updike.