I requested this book from the library expecting to love it, but the first few pages were so choked with baseball nostalgia of endless days of summer, boys growing to be gods in the green cathedrals of yesteryear, the tragic ending in the bitter days of autumn, blah blah blah. I almost put it down before I got through the intro. But I'm very glad I kept at it, because it ended up being wonderful -- if not at all what I expected when I decided to read it.

I thought I was going to get the story of More...

The author, Roger Kahn, grew up near Ebbets Field on St. Mark’s Place – he covered the Brooklyn Dodgers for two consecutive seasons during the ’52 & ’53 seasons, both of which ended in agonizing, 7-Game World Series losses to the Yankees.

Kahn’s Boys of Summer were Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Joe Black, Roy Campanella, Carl Erskine, Billy Cox, Andy Pafko, Preacher Roe, Clem Labine, and “Scoonj” – Carl Furillo, also known as “The Reading Rifle”.

In a mere ten days More...

"The Boys of Summer," about the 1952-1953 Brooklyn Dodgers, is a marvelous book. This is the team of Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, and Joe Black, among others. Today, Robinson is often portrayed in a safely beatific light, but he was fierce, coarse, and brilliant, and a "troublemaker" from childhood. My admiration of him is full to overflowing, as is my admiration for team captain Pee Wee Reese.

Roy Campanella, the Dodgers black catcher, was signed by the Dodgers not More...

This is a great story for anyone, especially those who are fans of baseball. If you are not a fan of baseball, however, do not be scared off. This book is not really about baseball. Although baseball serves as the backdrop, it is much more about life: having to deal with adversity, whether in forms of racism or personal crises, and the importance of teamwork and compassion. It is an in-depth account of the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers through the eyes of newspaper writer Roger Kahn. The book dives far More...

Ok, so I finally decided to read "Boys Of Summer" and I'm melancholy. I have just gone through an emotional ride with the epilogue. This is a wonderful book. I was hesitant the first 80 pages to understand why the book was heralded as great and then I understood. The inside look at the life of great sports reporters,the insider voices of Durocher the antagonist and Robinson's responses, the feeling amongst the team when they began to win, the insecurity of the Duke even at his prime,the humorou More...

Kahn's greatest work and one that ensures his immortality as not just a sportswriter, but as a writer.

He takes my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers and one by one writes about the great 1950s players from before the villain Walter O'Malley moved them to Los Angeles (BOO!!!!)

There is a poignancy and beauty in how he writes about what became and befell each of the players once their playing days were over: my hero, Jackie Robinson died young (53) from diabetes, which many say was caused by the incredible More...

What I disliked about this book: I would NOT agree with those that called this book "America's finest book on sports". I think the problem is... the majority of the book was about "where are they now". When the book was originally published in 1972, most of the readers were very familiar with the players. Now-a-days, the readers are not. I was interested to hear more about the ballplayers as ballplayers and more about how the season went. I've heard that the 1952 World Series was one of the grea More...

I tried to read this book when I was much younger (maybe 8th grade?) and couldn't get through it. Now I know why -- it's not a book for a 13-year-old. It's about aging, and disappointment, and nostalgia, and its very good at exploring these emotions through the lens of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 1950s. I enjoyed the baseball very much, and also liked the way Kahn wove in both his own life story and the stories of several players, as athletes and as people. It's striking how much the tale More...

Started out incredibly strong as a memoir of growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, becoming a baseball writer for the New York Herald Tribune, and covering the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952 and 1953. I'm a sucker for newspaper stories, so I was really enjoying that part of it. The second half of the book consists of Kahn going back and finding some of the members of those clubs 20+ years later to see what they were up to. This section of the book lacked any cohesive narrative, since it was just 5 or 1 More...

THE GREATEST GENERATION AND THE NATIONAL PASTIME

Kahn's book is regularly classified as the best book on baseball ever written, and in part I believe it's because much of it isn't actually about baseball. (Jim Bouton's BALL FOUR is usually seen as the other option. A very different book - good for humoring 14 year old boys.) The first half of the book paints the author's childhood in Brooklyn in a culturally sophisticated but middle-class Jewish home. Kahn's relationship with his dad, using the D More...

Part of my Brooklyn sentimental swing tour. I was too young to see the Dodgers at Ebbets but I remember as a three year-old the adults talking about Roy Campanella's tragic accident. We were a Dodgers family, and this book does bring back some of Brooklyn in the fifties, although not the one I knew.

Kahn's place in this book is part of the problem. It's part memoir, part reporting. In his 20s, he was a beat writer for the club. Fifteen years later, after the team had moved to LA and broken up, h More...

One of the better sports books that I have read, though it wouldn't take much to win that honor. Sports books, for me, are often as bad as sports movies, most of which are terrible. This one, however, starts so strongly as a memoir that even as it tails off in the end, I find it hard to criticize it. The "where are they now" aspect probably hurts this book ultimately, as I was not alive in '72 when the book was initially published, so I find myself reaching for where they are NOW. Carl Erskine's More...

Roger Kahn's memoir of childhood and time spent covering the Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald tribune is a work so expansive, it seems needlessly reductive to call it sports writing. And yet the book is certainly also that. Here, Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Carl Erskine live and breathe and play the greatest game invented as well as anyone has ever done. If you're not already in love with Dem Bums you will be by the time you get to the end of this book. And if you More...

Read this over a period of years, finally finished it. Because I am in the publishing industry, I found his newsroom tales by far the most interesting part of the book. The later where-are-they-now chapters for me were almost like transcribed notes. They were not well written in my opinion. And he seemed to be unwilling to write something about Billy Cox that he needed to write. Still, for the first half of the book, and for overall what the book accomplished in its time, I recommend it. If you More...

I really enjoyed Roger Kahn's recollections of growing up in Brooklyn, his time as a beat writer for the Dodgers, and his experience tracking down some of the principles (including but not limited to a certain #42) of the team 20 years after their success in the mid 50's. Don't be scared off if you're not crazy about sports writing; baseball actually plays a fairly minor role in the book. It's much more a meditation on the passage of time and the way individuals change (or not) as they age. I wa More...

I read a baseball book every summer. This is one of the classics that I finally got around to reading. Kahn was the New York Herald Tribune reporter for the 1952-53 Brooklyn Dodgers. The first half of the book recounts the pennant runs and series losses and the building of relationships with the men that made up this team. Kahn moved on from the Tribune after 1953 and the players eventually retired. The second half of the book recounts Kahn's visits with these men in 1970.

Baseball concentrates More...

I always try to read a baseball book at the beginning of each year to kind of get excited about the upcoming Spring training and baseball season. But honestly, this was so much more than the average "baseball book" that I hardly know where to start!

Part autobiography, part history, a little drama, lots of nostalgia, some humor, and a huge dose of good ole baseball! This book taught me a lot about real baseball player. Those guys we idolize or demonize depending on what they did on the field, but More...

This book absorbed most of Saturday night and all of Sunday - I managed to get laundry done but very little else. One critic complained that it was really two books and I suppose that is true. The first half is the author's story - how he grew up, how he discovered baseball, the Dodgers, his time as a copyboy and learning the ropes about writing about sports, then his time covering the Dodgers. His Dodgers were the Brooklyn Dodgers, through the 1950s, maybe into the 60s. While I read, they were More...

I have to start this off by saying that I hate the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. And, by association, their Brooklyn ancestors. But the history of the team in Brooklyn, the stories from before the westward migration of the Giants and Dodgers in the 50s, the legends of the New York baseball teams in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn... you can't love baseball and not love everything about this book. The first half, about growing up blocks away from Ebbets Field and the Dodgers, and being a More...

Very much enjoyed - savored every word, every phrase. I remembered this as a baseball book - having read it as a 16 year old in the seventies. Reading it as a 52 year old man (it was written by a 52 year old man) I find it is not a baseball book at all - but a memoir, a tribute to Kahn's father and family, a sweet remembrance of his initiation as a young beat writer covering the Dodgers, and a lament (and again a tribute) to the his aging childhood heroes... the Jackie Robinson Dodgers. this is More...

Terrific narrative that spans decades, written from the perspective of a beat reporter who covered the Brooklyn Dodgers back in their heyday in the fifties. The first part of the book captures the players in their primes. These Dodgers were a characterful bunch and featured the first black player in the league, Jackie Robinson. Very talented team, but not always successful, usually losing in heartbreaking fashion at the end of the season. No rose colored glasses, here; players, reporters, manage More...

This is a very well written book that tells the story of a boy, author Roger Kahn, growing up as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The true events that are told center around the glory days of the 1950's and the events that took place. Most notably the arrival of Jackie Robinson. The second half of the book is the story of what happened to those players after the "days of summer" were over. It is a very compelling book that is a must read for any true baseball fan.

This really has the feel of two books. The first half is the biography of Roger Kahn, a boy growing up in the shadow of Ebbets Field only to grow up to be a sports reporter assigned to follow the Brooklyn Dodgers. The second half of the book chronicles Kahn's follow-up visits to those early 50's Dodgers beginning some 15 years later and ending with the death of most of them in the afterwards updates. If you love baseball, this is a must read.

Just wanted to warn people thinking of spending the money on this that it is SO not worth it.
Beyond a few really beautifully insightful and poetic sentences, the book is mostly just a bare bones recounting of the author's life as a newspaper reporter following the Brooklyn Dodgers when Jackie Robinson played for em.
There's some basic explanation of the players' personalities, but not much in the way of analysis.
I couldn't even finish it.

Kahn even states in the conclusion of this novel that some of considered "The Boys of Summer" to be two books... and I'll agree with that (though I'll also agree with Kahn when he writes that there is an obvious connection between to the two parts which belong together). I wasn't really a fan of the first half of "The Boys of Summer" - I enjoy envisioning life in Brooklyn as the author grew up and took his initial steps towards sports writing (something that interests me very much), however, I f More...

I read this in high school. It was on a list of books that we could choose from in my honors English class. Of course, as a lifelong baseball fan, I was very excited to read it. When we went around the room and told the teacher my choice he said, condescendingly, "Now, you know that's a book about baseball and not boys, right?" What a dick.

Anyway, I digress...I loved this book. Seeing "42" made me remember it.

Honestly, I was disappointed by the book as a whole. I expected it to be about baseball. In my opinion, the best part of the book are the chapters about the players the author visits after they have spent some time in retirement. Reading about Carl Erskine's unbounded devotion to his son, who had a developmental disability, was moving as well as Jackie Robinson. However, I REALLY did not want to read about the author's early sexual experiences with the family maid. I wanted to read about basebal More...

This book was about more than baseball. A sociological study about life in the 50's when a lot of professional athletes had second jobs to make ends meet. When Roger Kahn visits the players in their later years, it humanizes them, and helps the reader realize everyone faces challenges, not just us poor, ordinary folk.

One of my favorite baseball books, which makes a great companion piece to Doris Kearn Goodwin's book, Wait Till Next Year. It's as much about Roger Kahn's relationship with his father (searching for an emotional connection across the generational chasm) as it is about those perennial also-rans, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Strikes against it:
It's about the Dodgers. Maybe now that Brooklyn has a pro sports stadium again, we can get over what Walter O'Malley did to the borough.
It's a pale reflection of The Glory of Their Times.

But that's it. Otherwise, it's well-researched, well-told. Not too mawkish ... in short, it doesn't suck.