David Halberstam's New York Times bestselling classic chronicle of baseball's most magnificent season, as seen through the battle royale between Joe DiMaggio's Yankees and Ted Williams's Red Sox for the heart of a nation. With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam returns us to the miraculous summer of '49 ... and to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat.
The first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of promise and innocence in America. Hardworking immigrants could achieve the American dream; heroes were truly heroic. Eric Rolfe Greenberg brilliantly and authentically chronicles the real-life saga of the first national baseball hero, Christy Mathewson, and the fictional story of a Jewish immigrant family of jewelers. In these pages Mathewson and other great players like John McGraw, Honus Wagner, and Connie Mack discover the realities behind the shining illusions: the burdens of being a hero and the temptations that taint success.