October 1964

by David Halberstam Narrated by Angelo Di Loreto

Overview

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

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

This follow-up to the best-selling Summer of '49 assesses the Yankee-Cardinal World Series of 1964.

Wes Lukowsky

Pulitzer Prize-winner Halberstam has always had a fondness for sports, and occasionally he turns away from his more "serious" historical pursuits to explore a particularly resonant moment in sporting time. Here it's the 1964 major-league baseball season, especially the World Series, which pitted the New York Yankees against the St. Louis Cardinals. Halberstam likes to place his sports reporting within a significant social context, and this time he isolates 1964 -- the last pennant for the Yankee dynasty that stretched back to Babe Ruth and the late 1920s -- as signifying the end of an era dominated by mostly white, power-hitting baseball. The Cardinals, with their three black starters in the field and All-Star pitcher Bob Gibson, were ushering in a new era of speed and black stars. Halberstam wants to hang his hat on the theory that baseball changed dramatically in 1964, and though he seems to be stretching a bit, let's give it to him. What really matters to most readers, after all, isn't the historical premise but the particulars: Halberstam's unerring eye for detail, his sense of team dynamics, and his sensitive, thoughtful profiles of the players and managers -- including Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, and Elston Howard on the Yanks and Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, Bill White, and Lou Brock on the Cards. Halberstam profiles each at length, how their past shaped their present and future, and he does the same with the teams. By any standard, this is a thoughtful, entertaining, and illuminating examination of two intriguing teams from baseball's golden era. Expect high demand among boomer-age fans.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172082603
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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