Les Krantz

It's easy to see why this book quickly made its way to the remainder table. The idea is to recreate the experience of watching movie newsreel segments about famous baseball events. The book comes with a DVD of such newsreels, with a short book chapter corresponding to each. Individually, each newsreel is fun to watch, but if you just watch the DVD from beginning to end, about halfway through it begins to get a bit tedious. And it's not really worth the trouble to set up the DVD each time to watch the segments individually along with each chapter, which I guess is how this package was intended. So, anyway, the book becomes a nice but not particularly compelling refresher course of baseball's most memorable events, including World Series, All-Star Games and individual achievements like Joe Dimaggio's hitting streak. Since it's coffee table book size, there are some nice photos to go along, as well. For someone just starting out to learn about baseball history, it's not a bad entry. Otherwise, mostly a pleasant stroll down baseball history lane. The DVD is nice, if watched in chunks instead of straight through.… (altro)