Results tagged “Biography” from One Hour to Read

A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery

It says a lot about Leigh Montville that I read a book about golf just because he wrote it. I have no interest in golf at all, but luckily this is more than a book about golf. It's also a book about 1930s crime and Hollywood stars. John Montague was thought by some to be the best amateur golfer in the world, yet no one could figure out why he never played professionally. That had something to do with the fact that he was wanted for armed robbery and didn't want his pictures in the paper. Despite that, he was a friend of Bing Crosby, Humphrey Bogart, Oliver Hardy, and other famous Hollywood stars, all because he could play golf like nobody else.

Montville's previous books were bestsellers about Ted Williams and Babe Ruth. Now, he's decided to write about an obscure golfer from the 1930s that few remember. I hate it when authors pander to the public like that to make a quick buck.

I first read Montville when he wrote for The Boston Globe in the 1980s. My father would pick me up an hour late from school, so that I could spend the time in the school library doing my homework -- or, as the case may be, read The Boston Globe sports page instead of doing my homework. The Globe back then featured an all-star cast including Gammons, Ryan, McDonough, Collins, and Montville. Montville was not as heralded as the others, but he may have been the best. He wasn't strictly a humor writer, but he nevertheless taught me how to write a humor column. Alas, he didn't help quite so much with algebra.

He now writes biographies, though they always have funny moments. And the man clearly loves to tell a good yarn. His books are full of little nuggets that often have nothing to do with the book as a whole, except that they are entertaining. He'll even occasionally include stories that are probably not true -- with proper warning, of course -- just because they are good stories. And that's just the kind of biography I like.

My Mother, Nancy Dickerson TV News' First Woman Star

John Dickerson is one of my favorite political reporters, meaning that I read all of his articles in Slate, listen to him on their weekly podcast, and am actually excited when he appears on "Washington Week in Review." Lest I seem too nerdy, I don't actually watch "Washington Week in Review." No, I listen to the podcast version. Okay, never mind, that makes me more nerdy.

This book is about his mother Nancy Dickerson, one of the first woman correspondents in TV news. After a few years as a producer, she became a correspondent for CBS News in 1960 and then worked for NBC News for most of the 1960's. I confess that I hadn't heard of her before. Admittedly, I wasn't alive when she was a star correspondent, though she was enough of a star that I'm surprised that I didn't know about her.

Her specialty was politics, and she was close to members of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, sometimes a little too close. She was often criticized for having too close a relationship to Johnson especially, though this was mostly because Lyndon Baines Johnson seemed to have a crush on her. It doesn't seem that there was any romantic relationship between them, though not for lack of trying on LBJ's part. At one point, during the 1960 campaign, Johnson had a few drinks and wandered into her hotel room in his pajamas to proposition her. She politely turned him down, and so he stayed in her room and talked about politics instead. Somehow, the pajamas make this story slightly classier than otherwise.

Later, during his Vice-Presidency, he was in Sweden, and knew that Nancy Dickerson was in Vienna on vacation. He then had the White House operators track her down, so that he could invite her to dinner in Paris. Again, she politely turned him down, but it's an amazing story. Ah, those were the days. Now, I don't think the Vice-President could be flown from Sweden to Paris in order to meet an attractive reporter for dinner in Paris. I think there has to be another reason for an Official State Visit.

Of course, I'm making the same mistake that others did at the time, by focusing on only the gossip. She was a remarkably hard-working reporter, as her son makes clear. As you can imagine, she didn't always get much respect from her colleagues in the press, though she did have important backers like Edward R. Murrow and Eric Servareid. She was a solid reporter, though she also tended to rely a little too much on her social connections to aid her reporting.

Dickerson is a great writer and writes a book that is also about himself, in addition to being about his mother. Some might complain about this, but I think it's interesting when he explores their relationship. He wasn't at all close to his mother during his teen years and tended to think she was a bit of a phony at the time, though he grew closer to her in her later years. In all, he handles some occasionally difficult material with ease. You try writing about the fact that your mother dated JFK. (They only went on a few dates in the early 1950s before Jackie.)

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time, and I'm not sure what took me so long. It's by a writer whose work I enjoy. It's about TV news, and I'm always a sucker for books about TV news. And it contains all sorts of behind-the-scenes material about JFK. Throw in some baseball and a little time travel, and it would have been just perfect.

Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

So my one hour of reading a day didn't fare so well with this selection. Way back when, as a Masters student in British History, I did a thesis on the first Conservative Women in the House of Commons (1919-1939), of which Nancy Astor was the very first. I wasn't a good historian, and it wasn't a particularly good thesis. (The core of my argument was such: There were these women, you know, and they were conservative, and they happened to be in the House of Commons.)



Nevertheless, Lady Astor was a dynamic character. I chose this book because while I knew all about Lady Astor, I never really have known very much about the famous Astor family, and I thought I should rectify that. Also, it was in the remainders section for $4.99.

So now I know way too much about the Astors, and even more about their New York hotels. There are entire chapters in here devoted to their luxury hotels. This isn't at all a bad book. It's just that I didn't really care. I like biographies, but biographies of families tend to lose me. There were five John Jacob Astors, several Williams, and a couple of Waldorfs on the side. I confess I started to mix them all up. Besides, my Lady Astor, who married into the family, is only mentioned on five pages.

I'm also not surprised that I fell off the reading wagon the moment I started reading a book related to what I was studying during my year in graduate school. After that year, I was so tired of history that for a few years I couldn't even watch the History Channel, never mind read history.

The portrait of Lady Astor is by John Singer Sargent, via Wikipedia.

Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports

In some ways, reading this was penance for reading the Jose Canseco book. I meant to start the baseball season with a good baseball book, you know something substantial. But I was stuck reading Vindicated instead. A Well-Paid Slave, of course, is a much better selection. In here, Snyder does a great job of explaining the battle over baseball's reserve clause.

Admittedly, it's not your typical baseball book. Let's just say that I don't usually come across quite so many Supreme Court Justices in my normal baseball reading. This one is chock full of them. Thurgood Marshall, Whizzer White, Arthur Goldberg, Chief Justice Warren Burger, and all your favorite justices are here.

The other reason I read this is that I didn't know much about Curt Flood, and for that I felt a little ashamed. While Flood ended up losing his case at the Supreme Court, his challenge to baseball's reserve clause led to the creation of free agency in the 1970s. In terms of impact on the game, he is one of the most important players of all time, and yet most fans probably don't know who he even is. His attempt to fight for free agency led him to give up over $100,000 of salary, lose several years of his career, and flee the country in despair.

While Flood deserves his status as a hero, it's painful to read about him. Sadly, the case practically ruined him. Mostly destitute after losing the case and blackballed from baseball, he ended up living in an alcoholic stupor for the next fifteen years. Finally, in the late 1980s, he was able to give up drinking. By then, also, more players began to recognize his sacrifices. Thankfully, he seemed to enjoy the last ten years of his life, but it's amazing he made it there.

Brad Snyder is a lawyer by trade, so there are long discussions about Supreme Court precedents, which at times were over my head. Still, the story is fascinating. The strangest part is to see how judges handled a trial about baseball. Justice Harry Blackmun, a fanatical baseball fan, wrote the majority opinion in favor of Major League Baseball. The opinion started with a "27-page ode to baseball history," including the entire text of the poem "Casey at the Bat" and a list of Blackmun's 79 favorite baseball players.

Here was a man who could clearly have used a blog in 1971. Having no outlet for his opinions on baseball, Blackmun was forced to include them in a Supreme Court opinion. The next year, he wrote the opinion for Roe v. Wade, which to the best of my knowledge does not include a list of Blackmun's favorite abortionists. I

t's tough to be a baseball fan and a judge deciding baseball's fate. Consider this exchange between the original judge of the case, Irving Cooper, and baseball star Joe Garagiola who was testifying as a witness for Major League Baseball:

"Do you always have a smile like that?" Cooper asked.

"Yes, always," [Garagiola said.]

"That is a blessing."

Garagiola returned the compliment: "I wish you were on a bubble gum card, Judge. I'd have you."

Mind you, this conversation actually took place on the witness stand. So much for impartiality. Apparently, back then if you were a star baseball player, you could use your bar pick-up lines on judges too. Who knew?