(Scribner, 628 pages, $30)
Willie Mays “defined—and continues to define—what baseball, in a perfect world, should look like,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. Supremely skilled in every facet of the game, he played with an exuberance and grace that no other star of his era could match. “Known for his reticence and distrust of writers,” though, he’s always been a tough man to get to know. Author James Hirsch spent seven years working to persuade Mays to participate in this full-length biography, and his hard work pays off in an “authoritative” chronicle that sheds at least some light on Mays’ personality. Hirsch’s writing too often lapses into the self-conscious sonorousness of a Ken Burns documentary, but—“like a long out to center field that scores a runner”—it gets results.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Hirsch attempts to read Mays’ life through the prism of American race relations, but his arguments just don’t convince, said Gerald Eskenazi in The Wall Street Journal. Mays has never liked talking about racism. In the contentious era during which he played, he let his leadership and his dedication to his profession speak for him. Fortunately, Hirsch does excellently convey what made Mays so remarkable on the baseball field—the rocket arm, the galloping catches, the home runs knocked into the upper deck, the daringly brilliant base-running. “He could fly close to the sun and his wings wouldn’t melt.”
-
August 24 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include Putin at Donald Trump's circus, gallons of whitewash, and a foldable cartoon
-
5 Post Office-approved cartoons about mail-in votingCartoons Artists take on reverse logic, Putin's election advice, and more
-
The battle of the weight-loss drugsTalking Point Can Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly regain their former stock market glory? A lot is riding on next year's pills
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”