Perhaps there are better Giants history books out there.
934072
This book is full of anecdotes. Some are, of course, more interesting than others. Some chapters discuss the various decades that the Giants have played ball in San Francisco. Other chapters discuss the team's major stars of the past. There is information about ownership, spring training, playoff games won and lost, and infamous brawls. Having followed the Giants only since 2002, I cannot attest to the accuracy of all the events this book describes that occurred before that year. The last 3 extremely short chapters discuss the 21st century Giants and their 3 championships. These chapters must have been tacked on to the original book, which came out in 2003. I can say that I noticed some "facts" in the last two chapters that are wrong. It causes me to be suspicious about other "facts" throughout the book. I also found it odd that the authors, in discussing the Giant's game seven World Series win over Kansas City, never mentioned Jeremy Affeldt, who was the game winning pitcher in that contest. The book goes into detail about every other hitter, pitcher, reliever and opponent who was involved in any of the Giant's playoff games. Perhaps there are better Giants history books out there.
4792486
This subject matter caught my attention but the organization of the material and the writing could be better.  Some of the history is not correct but most readers would not notice this.  I found some interesting and useful information but in total, I was disappointed.
3540035
"The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History" was written by a group of fans who go through the history of the game all the way back to James Naismith's peach baskets.  Their style is obviously taken from the Bill Simmons School of Frat Boy Writers (style and one-liners over substance and depth), although the overall level of literacy is higher than The Sports Guy's.  These are Frat Boys, but they're not Delta House alumni.

So WHAT will you read?  A good, well-paced history from Naismith through the earlier decades and top teams (the Harlem Globetrotters curiously get short shrift, given their history and influence), and it's probably the easiest, most compact history of the first half-century of basketball I've read.  Like so many other histories of the game (including Simmons') the NBA of the 40's and 50's gets glossed over.  I found it curious that Bethlehem Shoals considers Frank Ramsey the NBA's first small forward:  Bethlehem, meet Jim Pollard.  By the time you're up to page 50 of over 200, you're into the Sixties.

From that point more attention is paid to the eras and selected players, and you get a good overall feel for how the game has changed over the past five decades.  You'll have to slog a piece on the ABA that is incredibly condescending while dealing with pieces about the 1970 New York Knicks and Michael Jordan that'll leave you wondering how they were typed out while the writers were genuflecting, but for the most part the Undisputed Guide is generally readable and at times thought-provoking.  I wasn't sure how I'd like the Jacob Weinstein illustrations in lieu of any photos but they generally work...it's a 70's style of graphic arts, but the players depicted are recongnizable.  There are numerous graphs and charts that are ill-described, which is unfortunate because some of them would be pretty interesting if you knew what the hell they were about.

In no way would I consider it a "serious" history of the pro game: You'd do a lot better to read the introduction, write down the books mentioned as influential to this one, and buy those instead if that's what you're looking for (and I'd add Leonard Koppett's "24 Seconds to Shoot" as the best pure history of the first 25 years of the NBA out there).  If you're looking for a light-hearted and reasonably well-written history of basketball you can read in a couple of days without taxing yourself mentally, you'll do fine with this one.  Decent, but ultimately not essential to serious fans.
4630294
We have had many great historians and history books so it is not worth one's time to read minor history books like this one. Lind has written some decent things but this is not one of them.

Midwest Independent Research, educational websites. US history, mwir-ushistory.blogspot. There is a book list here.
940874
I'm reviewing this book as a potential learning resource for a kid, which I think is fair, since the author specifically mentions a museum exhibit and includes photos of artifacts in the back.

Although the introduction says that Native Americans were present 2,000 years before Europeans "discovered" America, the timeline first shows a Native American event at 650 CE and then Leif Ericsson at 1000 CE. Everything else is general world history. It would've been more relevant to have more Native American history in the timeline, or if necessary, to have Native American events depicted on top of the timeline and world events on the bottom so that they can be seen side by side, because surely there was more than one Native American event of importance between 3000 BCE and 1500 CE (and "Cleopatra kills herself with the bite of an asp" doesn't quite seem to deserve a spot alongside "Teotihuacan Mexican civilization at its zenith").

Story-wise, it's okay. Not particularly imaginative, just serves as a vehicle to show Cahokia's grandeur, especially compared to the small village that the young boy and his family come from.

The story within a story (the legend about He-Who-Gets-Hit-With-Deer-Lungs) is kind of random and out of place. Nor did it add much to the rest of the story, other than to say that storytelling is how people passed the time on long trips. I felt that a better legend could have been chosen, if the author really wanted to incorporate one.

Mentioned lacrosse. As the game did derive from Native American traditions, it should have been given the Native Americans' actual name for it, which, as written in the book, isn't clear is the case (but I'm guessing not, since we like to bastardize everything). I thought that this bit of history ought to have been addressed in the back and even expanded on, especially since the Native Americans played the game for very different reasons than we do today. However, I was under the impression that it was more an Iroquois game, and that this story was a bit too far west for it to be accurate, not sure.

Page with artifacts in middle of story out of place; perhaps should have been placed with other artifacts / exhibit blurb in back. I understand WHY this might have been put here (right after the spread about trading with craftsmen), but it brought a halt to the actual story. Regarding the exhibit blurb at the end, it would also have been nice to see pictures of Cahokia itself, whether in its present-day form or in documentary photos of excavations, not just the artifacts after they were recovered and cleaned. Although the artifacts were well-photographed, I think additional photos would have made the relevance more immediate, as people are still trying to piece together and understand the significance of past cultures, not just, "Oh, yeah, we're done, here's the final product. Time to move on to the next dusty dig site and dead civilization."

Illustrations are the best part of this book; they're very colorful and vivid. My one qualm here would be that several of the characters look like each other; not just that several have body paint or mohawks (or whatever they're called), but that the ones who do have the same facial features as well. It doesn't help that these similar characters are grouped next to each other: mohawks with mohawks, body paint with body paint. This is most apparent on the page where the villagers are "exploring the city and trading with the craftsmen in the plaza." If the point is to lend authenticity, then using (and reusing) stock characters obviously detracts from that.

Characters are further anonymized because no tribe is ever mentioned. I don't recall names for landmarks like rivers, either, which I assume had names back in the day.

I would probably use this, especially if I can't find another story that weaves in day-to-day details (as opposed to folktales, which seem more prevalent among book offerings), but those holes do need to be patched.
4784680
I'm a big fan of The Berenstain Bears books but found this one not measuring up.  I didn't think the name calling was necessary, for example.  Won't be keeping it.  There are better books.
1270579
I was not very impressed with some aspects of this book. The authors seem to believe that every Luftwaffe experte was the perfect specimen of a man. In their efforts to romanticise these people, I believe they do the pilots and themselves an injustice. They have left many gaping holes in their research (which in one case they were silly enough to highlight) and although much of the book covers some rarely-seen aspects, I found it less-than satisfying. Whilst I accept that the authors knew some of the characters involved, I would have appreciated a rather more frank discussion. That makes it less than good value for money and not as much fun as Mike Spick's book on the same subject (though his is, of course, far less detailed and much cheaper).
1768102
As a delusional Mariners fan (growing up in Seattle will do that to you) who loves baseball, I'm always excited to try out new biographies and historical texts on America's greatest sport (You Gotta Have Wa is my personal favorite).  I knew of Billy Martin, particularly being a "flawed genius" as the author points out, but was anxious to learn more about him.  Author Bill Pennington does a great job showing his admiration for Martin and seems to have done a great deal of research on the man himself but two things stuck out to me.

The first I noticed was Pennington's unwavering love for Martin, which is fine, but he seemingly glosses over Martin's battles with his temper and drinking.  To me, hearing about struggle and strife is always a good way to writing a biography but Pennington doesn't spend as much time on it as he should and it kinda conflicts with the title.  Not that I didn't enjoy reading about Martin's life, just wanted to hear more about his struggles that, ultimately, killed much of his career despite his real genius in the sport.

The second were some date facts that seemed a little off from the first night world series to Pennington stating some people were doing something when, in fact, they were dead at the time.  I gave my copy to my Dad, an even more hardcore Mariners fan, and quickly received an itemized list of what was incorrect.  It was a bit concerning.  Either our research is off or Pennington didn't fact check properly.  These errors need to be resolved.

All in all, a promising read that, ultimately, falls short due to lacking the real story and bad fact checking.
2320318
OK, look, I'm as leery of the "establishment" and the Big Money as the next guy, but I was really hoping, in a book that advertises itself as a history book, for a bit more scholarly and a bit less opinionated work.
2298569
For me, not that pertinent,nor was the history surrounding it. He has written much, much, better on more interesting topics.
2286859
I always thought reading a book about Gold Rush-era California would be interesting, but Susan Lee Johnson has been able to make it seem not very compelling.
This is a "People's History" sort of book, a tale of the minor characters in history, in particular the miners and their society.  In such a book, there are oppressors (often white males) and oppressed (usually women and non-whites).  Johnson supports this thesis with numerous tales of robbery and murder, which may all be true, but also reflect a political agenda that she is trying to promote.  This removes any real objectivity from her book.
The main problem with this book, however, is it is not very well-organized.  Johnson has filled the book with some good (and some not-so-good) anecdotes, but there is not all that much joining these stories together.  The result is a sometimes informative but usually rambling work.  In the end, I felt like I hadn't learned very much about this era other than a few tales that needed a better context.
872079
The Schwartz brothers are the first Jewish brothers to play in the NFL since 1923.  I wish the book would've talked this up a bit more.  It's just ok.
Nothing fascinating or intriguing, just a bunch of stories about making it to the NFL and other mini-anecdotes about family and food.

Geoff's section on his battle with stuttering as a young boy is rather poignant, and maybe the highlight of the book.
About a dozen recipes are included at the end.

Football fans will probably enjoy.
2282600
Larry Bramble in his book "For Liberty: My Ancestor's Story of Immigration and the Civil War," does what any good amateur genealogist, or family historian, should do.  He sets the lives of his ancestors in their proper context against the larger historical backdrop.  Unfortunately that is all that can be said about it.

Tracing the military history of his great-great-grandfather, Philip Lenderking, of the 5th Maryland Infantry, and his four brothers; Frederick, of the Fremont Body Guard and the 181st Ohio Infantry; Rudolph, of the 2nd Michigan Infantry; George of the 27th Michigan Infantry and Louis, of the 12th Maryland Infantry; as well as his great-great-grandfather Taugart Snyder of the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

The compiled service records of each featured soldier, and the pension records of Frederick and Philip Lenderking, all from the National Archives, and seven reports from the "Official Records" are the only primary source material I was able to unearth in Mr. Bramble's bibliography, though there are excerpts from letters mentioned in his text they are not noted in the bibliography.  Mr. Bramble also sighted in his bibliography one magazine article and seven printed works, two of which were the King James Bible and Webster's Dictionary.  The rest, and indeed a very large percentage of his research, was done online using a wide variety of websites, some more credible than others.  I counted 102 citations to online sources with 28 of them being Wikipedia articles.

Mr. Bramble relates the experiences of his ancestors in a linear narrative, chronologically as they happened.  But with so few primary resources to rely upon, Mr. Bramble is left to give a thumbnail sketch of each battle his family members participated in, gleaned in large part from only secondary sources, with a few statistics thrown in.

Throughout the book are many photographs, illustrations and maps.  Many of the maps are hand-drawn and had to be so reduced in size for publication that many of them are illegible, and therefore are not at all useful in supplementing the text.

What Mr. Bramble has attempted to do is admirable.  It is important to be able to set the lives of your ancestors against the backdrop of the historical past, by doing so you get a much clearer understanding of who they were and where they fit into the larger historical picture.  But with such scant primary resources to pull from, and such heavy use of online and secondary sources, Mr. Bramble has written a book that will only be useful to the members of his family.

ISBN 978-1257976003, Lulu.com,  2011, Softcover, 268 pages, Maps, Photographs, Illustrations, Footnotes, Bibliography. $16.49.  To purchase click HERE.
3104429
I put this on my son's birthday list and his grandpa bought it for him. I was excited about it and love the premise. BUT, sadly I don't love it. In fact, I'm considering throwing it away! I FULLY BELIEVE THE BIBLE IS TRUE AND THAT GIANTS ARE NOT JUST MYTH. I put that in caps so if someone is scanning my negative review they'll know it's not because I disagree with the claims. The problem is the presentation. It presents the true biblical account directly next to various false myths and legends about false gods. There is little to point out a distinction, and for a child I can see this being very confusing! My son is very discerning, and so i did explain it to him and he understood, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am introducing him to detailed accounts of other cultures "creation stories". At least not in the way this book does... It would be one thing for us to discuss it (and we have discussed that many other people follow false gods), but this book presents the myths with equal esteem as he does the truth of God's word; and also muddles true biblical accounts with extra-biblical writings. There's a whole section on the book of Enoch. That didn't sit too well with me. He points out that book of Enoch is a "non-biblical text", but speaks of it as if it still has relevance and can be looked to for information. It includes quotes from the book of Enoch and also from Justin Martyr that claim that giants came from angels commingling with women and producing children, and it no where points out that that's not true. If I didn't know better, the way it's presented, I would assume it was! Another example is the first page: There are one sentence statements about giants from different countries. For Israel it says, "In the time before the Flood of Noah, there were giants known as the Nephilim - a name that literally means 'giants.'" Then right above that is the one for Greece which reads, "It was the Titan, Prometheus, who gave us fire." It was... was it? The wording of that seems very strange to me, especially right next to Israel's, with no distinction between which is true and which is not. All in all, I'm too uncomfortable with it to keep it around, which is sad because I had such high hopes, and also because it was expensive!
671589
This was a fairly good military history and analysis of much more detail about the Meuse Argonne Offensive than I've found any place else.  Among other things, it details the horrible mismanagement of operations by Pershing ... and also Pershing's wisdom in removing himself from that and putting guys who had gotten results instead.  It lacks, however, a better tie in with contemporary events on the whole front, adequate mapping and illustration (though the author's careful descriptions do help a lot)..  Also, I was disappointed in his treatment of the black regiments.  The text implies that he found his sources too prejudiced to give him any reliable data.  He also did not really discuss the actual impact of the offensive on the Germans.  Hindenburg actually said that it chewed up divisions of Germans as rapidly as it did Americans, and its impact was even more decisive that the great British advance.

This book definitely, however, fills a void in our
3648191
The overall points that the book makes are sound, but unfortunately some of the secondary sources used are not of a high standard. Will Durant is cited as a standard source of history and although he is admirable, he was writing 70 years ago! Surely historians found out a bit more since then. The discussion of Thermopylae could have been a lot better though its conclusions are sound. Imagine my surprise on page 105 when I discovered a Christian child going through garbage in ancient Rome to discover potato peelings which would make a good lunch! Potatoes along with tomatoes and peppers are an American invention and did not make it to Europe until sometime after 1492. Physician heal thyself only in this case it is "author read your book". On page 229 the author quotes Will Durant "New plants came from America to enrich European agriculture- the potato, tomato, artichoke, squash, maize". Still no mention of capsicum and Chili. This does not destroy my faith in the book but rather reminds me of an earlier version of a novel involving Thermopylae where the hero had tomatoes for breakfast. Otherwise the book is reasonably satisfactory. It has an interesting argument and is easy to read.
1730413
I feel the same way about "American Mafia : A History of Its Rise to Power" as I did about Reppetto's other book "NYPD" (co-authored by James Lardner): while I found it interesting and well-written, I felt that it left too many gaps and that some of the areas covered were not covered enough. And like NYPD, the book seemed more like a collection of mob anecdotes than an investigation into the "History of Its Rise to Power". Reppetto is to be admired for trying to tackle such a long history, and to be fair, much of it is told in an engaging style. But it seems like too broad a subject, for any writer.
Perhaps if he had just focused on the early mob history, or the history of its real organizing in the 30s and 40s, or the history of its bold, brash decades of the 50s and 60s, he would have forced himself to be more focused and selective. Instead, the book feels watered down. On a positive note, as the other reviewers have mentioned, there is no glamorizing these criminals. They are often portrayed as the vicious and psychopathic parasites they were. The key role that Prohibition played is the strong point of this book, and Reppetto does a fantastic job on discussing that.
One last note, this book, like others, fails to emphasize one thing: the Italians did not invent organized crime. The New York neighborhood known as the Five Points was rife with gangs of Irish immigrants, and they, like the mob, worked hand-in-hand with the politicians and judges that were owned by the Democratic political machine known as Tammany Hall. Later, a generation of Jewish immigrants, with names like Zelig, Buchalter, and Rothstein would dominate the crime scene. Reppetto does an okay job of covering these issues, something other mob "historians" neglect. But the reasons WHY the Italian mob became so famous is sort of glossed over. Besides their extreme viciousness, there are two reasons that made the Italian crime world so famous that people think it was the only criminal organization: (1) it existed during an era of mass communication, like movies and radio, so their every atrocity was announced nationwide and it provided fascinating characters for movies; and (2) because it existed in a world of expanding personal communications (i.e., telephones) they could conduct their "business" more effectively and instantly, and keep things organized. Perhaps if Reppetto were to focus just on these elements of the Mafia, we would really have a true look at its rise to power.
Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points