Steve

Extraordinary!

Revisado: 11-13-19

A wonderful listen... personal and honest, yet broad in scope. I finished listening two weeks ago and the scenes and stories have really stuck with me. Wonderful to have the author reading her own work -- I wish all autobiographers did the same.

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The title says it all

Revisado: 06-16-16

A terrific short listen -- even for those of us who merely "like" the Star Wars movies. It is indeed a wide-ranging look at the world through a Star Wars lens, and I can imagine those who love the series will enjoy the book even more than I did.

At times it's fun and light (Sunstein has a surprisingly good sense of humor for a regulatory czar!), and at times it's quite serious and thought-provoking. The chapter on fatherhood was particularly insightful.

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Great stories and great writing

Revisado: 06-14-15

I've read Michael Bamberger for years in Sports Illustrated, and I've always enjoyed his writing style. This book is terrific -- a legitimate page-turner (which I wouldn't have believed given that at its core it's a book about golfers).

Bamberger tracks down "living legends" like Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Hale Irwin but also introduces the reader to his "secret legends" including former tour caddies, a USGA official, and others with as much -- if not more -- to share than the names you've known for years.

Bamberger weaves a particularly dramatic story around Ken Venturi's accusation of cheating against Arnold Palmer at the 1958 Masters. I'd heard the accusation but the back story was more compelling than I could've imagined, and it displays human frailties in full relief.

Along for the ride on Bamberger's tour is Mike Donald, 1990 US Open runner-up to Hale Irwin. Bamberger's long-time friendship -- including highs and lows -- with Donald adds a very human dimension to what is already a wonderful read.

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Great in many ways, but one fatal flaw

Revisado: 01-06-13

The performance is terrific -- even with a lot of dialog, the reader does an excellent job of providing each character with a personality that enhances the author's perspective. Very well done.

The story is in almost all ways excellent, but there's one relationship that struck me as so far-fetched as to weaken -- in a meaningful way -- the story's overall impact and credibility. I don't want to provide spoilers, so I won't write any more, but this relationship was so repeatedly jarring that it colors my overall impression of the book and moves it from excellent to very good.

Oh, and don't worry if you're not a baseball fan. It starts off as though baseball is the centerpiece, but it's merely a vehicle for telling a character-driven story.

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A Delight

Revisado: 07-12-11

What a pleasant surprise! I picked this up somewhat randomly and found myself completely engrossed. The characters are wonderfully drawn, the stories are compelling and fascinating, and the science is boiled down into digestible pieces for those of us who didn't take Organic Chemistry in college. Great research into a really fascinating time and time period.

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A First-Round Bust

Revisado: 07-12-11

I grew up with ESPN, and so had high expectations for the book. And, truth be told, there's more than enough great material in this book to make it appealing to most ESPN fans. But the content is so poorly structured and the narration is so uneven that I've considered more than once just turning it off, never to listen again.

I appreciate that the book is more of an oral history than anything else, but even oral histories can be cohesive, with chapters that follow selected themes rather than meandering from topic to topic. The transitions are jarring at best, and it's almost as if this is a compilation of articles rather than a traditional book.

Two of the three readers are embarrassingly bad, especially Joan Baker, who provides the female voices. Everything comes out as breathy and overly dramatic -- ugh. In retrospect, I wish I had picked up the hardcopy.

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