At long last, the epic biography Ted Williams deserves--and that his fans have been waiting for.
Ben Bradlee, Jr., spent 25 years at the Boston Globe as a reporter and editor, overseeing as deputy managing editor, among many critically acclaimed stories, the Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"A work of obvious journalistic muscle and diligence, The Kid
provides documentary evidence on every page to bolster the book's
presumption that Williams was, to use the clich�, larger than
life....Mr. Bradlee writes a graceful sentence and crafts a cogent
paragraph. His authorial attitude is one of restraint, generally
letting the flood of his facts and quotations from interviews speak
for themselves." ---Bruce Weber, New York Times
"Bradlee's sumptuous biography details an extraordinary American
life while showing us how that life morphed into legend. The Kid
reads like an epic, starting before Williams's birth in 1918,
outlining his Anglo and Mexican heritage growing up in Southern
California, and continuing after his death in 2002 to the present.
Bradlee has given us the fullest exploration yet of his monumental
ego and the best explanation for his vast inferiority
complex....The book is packed with great moments." ---Allen Barra,
Boston Globe
"Fans seeking a complete picture of the beloved star who inspired a
slew of nicknames now have but one place to turn. This complex
figure comes to life in The Kid, an absorbing 854-page biography by
longtime Boston Globe reporter and editor Ben Bradlee Jr. Based on
some 600 interviews that reflect more than a decade of research,
this is surely the definitive Ted Williams book....Bradlee's
brilliant account is required reading for any Red Sox fan. It's
also a fascinating portrait of a complex character that a baseball
agnostic or even a Yankees fan will find hard to put down."
---Jerry Harkavy, Associated Press
"Fun to read....The prose is breezy, the research and reporting are
impeccable....This book very much sets out to be the definitive
document of a great, complicated, fascinating person and
ultimately, it succeeds....The context Bradlee provides---the heavy
detailing, the quotes and anecdotes---brings the reader inside
Williams's psychology, to the extent that that's possible....You're
happy for everything you've learned in this giant book. Because it
has portrayed the man in full." ---Dave Bry, Slate
"Required reading." ---Billy Heller, New York Post
"Superb....Ted Williams hated what he considered invasions of his
privacy, but perfectionist that he was, he would probably have to
concede that the work ethic that underpins The Kid is exemplary.
Mr. Bradlee, who was a reporter and editor at the Boston Globe for
25 years, spent 10 years researching and writing this book; he
interviewed about 600 people and seems to have read everything
about and by Williams. But research alone doesn't make The Kid a
first-rate biography. The author was able to organize the great
mass of data into a lucid and readable whole and-most
important-bring his subject and the people around him to
provocative and stormy life. When I began reading this book, I
thought that only baseball fans would find it interesting. But
after finishing The Kid, I suspect that even those indifferent to
the sport might find its human drama absorbing." ---Howard
Schneider, Wall Street Journal
"What distinguishes Bradlee's The Kid from the rest of Williams lit
is, its size and the depth of its reporting. Bradlee seemingly
talked to everyone, not just baseball people but Williams's fishing
buddies, old girlfriends, his two surviving wives and both of his
daughters, and he had unparalleled access to Williams family
archives. His account does not materially alter our picture of
Williams the player, but fills it in with much greater detail and
nuance....Bradlee's expansiveness enables his book to transcend the
familiar limits of the sports bio and to become instead a
hard-to-put-down account of a fascinating American life. It's a
story about athletic greatness but also about the perils of fame
and celebrity, the corrosiveness of money and the way the cycle of
familial resentment and disappointment plays itself out generation
after generation." ---Charles McGrath, New York Times Book Review
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
