Donald Dewey

Being the life of Hal Chase, deadball baseball's foremost scapegrace. In their rather crabbed introduction, the authors explain that they're going to rectify the errors of previous biographers (strangely not mentioned in their bibliography) who have succumbed to either the Scylla of demonizing Chase or the Charybdis of offering him their forgiveness as an unfortunate scapegoated by baseball's powers-that-be for doing nothing more than was commonly winked at in his day; however, the latter approach is precisely what they end up doing. Which is not to say that this is a bad book; the authors are exceptionally talented writers who have researched the source material exhaustively. The book's main, if not only, problem is its considerable length. For deadball obsessives like myself, this isn't much of a problem. But it did take me three weeks to wade through this, an expenditure of precious reading time which I find it difficult not to resent, and, more to the point, makes it hard to recommend this to those not similarly obsessed, particularly since there is at least one other perfectly acceptable biography which is less of a doorstop. Moreover, it isn't difficult to suss out why the book is overlong, viz., the rather extended account of the Black Sox affair, which Chase appears to have had only a rather tenuous connection with, though many a baseball luminary, then and since, has tried to damn him into a more significant role. Chase's long career of thrown games and point man for various gambling schemes have kept him out of the Hall of Fame despite the many who claim that he was baseball's greatest first baseman. Surely that's obloquy enough.… (mehr)

Well done bio on dynamic actor Lee J. Cobb with plenty of first hand accounts from his children and those who knew and worked with him. The book has plenty of photographs as well as a complete filmography, stageography, and list of television appearances. The book has a complete bibliography as well. The author provided some follow-up at the end to let the reader know what happened to Cobb's two wives. He hinted throughout the book what the children were doing but I would have liked that summarized at the end along with information on any grandchildren. I did think the book spent a little too much time and detail on Group Theatre activities but overall I felt this was a good bio on Lee J. Cobb.… (mehr)