Helpful Score: 5
I've read many of Doris Kearns Goodwins books of historical people, so I wanted to know more about her own life. I learned she and her father were avid baseball fans -- a sport I could do completely without. If you love baseball, you'll love this book.
Helpful Score: 4
I had to read this for a class, but it turned out to be a fantastic memoir. It's written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a noted historian whose focus is on the Kennedy administration. Her memoir is about growing up on Long Island in the 1950s. Central to the story is baseball. As all great nonfiction does, this memoir reads like a novel.
Swirling themes include religion (which NY team do the Catholics root for), class (which NY team do the middle class root for), and race (what happens when Jackie Robinson comes to play for the Dodgers?). Ironically, gender is barely even mentioned...the author knew her box scores as well as any other fan.
Swirling themes include religion (which NY team do the Catholics root for), class (which NY team do the middle class root for), and race (what happens when Jackie Robinson comes to play for the Dodgers?). Ironically, gender is barely even mentioned...the author knew her box scores as well as any other fan.
A delightful memoir of a young girl growing up as a (Brooklyn) Dodgers fan in the 1950s. This book transported me back to a New York/Long Island of some 50 years ago. Simply beautiful writing and an engaging tale. If only Brooklyn still had a baseball team.
Read it awhile ago. It was fun to look back at my NY and the way it used to be. Not the easiest read, very factual as she is a historian but still very readable. One of those books you talk about after wards because you learned so much.
I'm not a huge baseball fan--nor much of a memoir fan either, to be honest. Since I have always admired Doris Kearns Goodwin and since none of her other books are posted, I thought I'd read this one. It took me a little while to warm up to it; don't know if it was her writing or just me. Her family certainly has an interesting and challenging history. Once the story got going, even the baseball parts kind of took on a life of their own. A warm and inspiring and, yes, nostalgic story. As comforting as our memory of the 1950s may be, Ms. Goodwin's story also reminds us that it was not as simple and warm and fuzzy a time as we prefer to remember.
Doris Kearns Goodwin does an outstanding job of taking us back to the '50's and reliving what life was like for a kid growing up in New York. You'll enjoy it more if you are a baseball fan, and you'll love it if you are a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Great read.
Great read.
I think every single Brooklyn Dodger fan has written a memoir of those days. Amazing, because their attendance in their last years was about the same as the Kansas City A's in their last years.
"Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball."
The author is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
First line: "When I was six, my father gave me a bright-red scorebook that opened my heart to the game of baseball."
The author is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
First line: "When I was six, my father gave me a bright-red scorebook that opened my heart to the game of baseball."
This book was written by a Gifted writer..It is awesome! She tells of her very Catholic upbringing, life so interestingly described of life in the 50's, then the 60's.I write very few reviews, but this book is so good, I wrote to the author! The book makes you fall in love with her, as a darling child..she is just wonderful!!
Doris Kearns Goodwin grew up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950's. Neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant and Yankee fans.
Considering the current climate/situation, this might be a good read for fans missing their usual sporting events.
Considering the current climate/situation, this might be a good read for fans missing their usual sporting events.
WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR is the story of a young girl growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, when owning a single-family home on a tree-lined streat meant the realization of dreams, when everyone knew everyone else on the block, and the children gathered in the streets to play from sunup to sundown . The neighborhood was equally divided among Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans, and the corner stores weere the scenes of fierce and affectionate rivalries.
We meet the people wo influenced Goodwin's early life: her father, who emerged from a traumatic childhood without a trace of self-pity or rancor and who taught his daughter early on that she should say whatever she thought and should bring her voice into any conversation at any time; her mother, whose heart problems left her with the arteries of a seventy-year-old when she was only in her thirties and whose love of books allowed her to break the boundaries of the narrow world to shich she was confined by her chronic illness; her two older sisters; her friends on the block; the local storekeepers; her school friends and teachers. The narrative begins in 1949 at the dawn of a glorious era in baseball, an eaa that saw one of the three New York teams competing in the World Series every year, an era when the lineups on most teams remained basically intact year after year, allowing fans to extend loyalty and love to their chosen teams.
We meet the people wo influenced Goodwin's early life: her father, who emerged from a traumatic childhood without a trace of self-pity or rancor and who taught his daughter early on that she should say whatever she thought and should bring her voice into any conversation at any time; her mother, whose heart problems left her with the arteries of a seventy-year-old when she was only in her thirties and whose love of books allowed her to break the boundaries of the narrow world to shich she was confined by her chronic illness; her two older sisters; her friends on the block; the local storekeepers; her school friends and teachers. The narrative begins in 1949 at the dawn of a glorious era in baseball, an eaa that saw one of the three New York teams competing in the World Series every year, an era when the lineups on most teams remained basically intact year after year, allowing fans to extend loyalty and love to their chosen teams.
Young Doris Goodwin's father shares his love of baseball , teaching Doris to also love baseball. A story of Goodwin's growing up during the 50's in a suburban neighborhood, where residents were fans of the Dodgers, Yankees and other teams.
Goodwin shares not only the game of baseball, but of history lessons: McCarthyism, A-bomb drills, religious festivals of the Catholic Church, and many other topics.
Goodwin shares her passionate love of history, ceremony and ritual. A great read, not only for baseball fans, but to enjoy the writing of a good author.
Goodwin shares not only the game of baseball, but of history lessons: McCarthyism, A-bomb drills, religious festivals of the Catholic Church, and many other topics.
Goodwin shares her passionate love of history, ceremony and ritual. A great read, not only for baseball fans, but to enjoy the writing of a good author.
Memoir of New York and baseball in the 1950's by a woman. Touching.
