mattmatt3409's review against another edition
4.0
I was very moved reading this book. Lou Gehrig was an exceptional athlete with the grace to know he was the "luckiest man alive" to be blessed with such physical gifts and skills to hit a baseball. He was kind, a bit shy, insecure and a mama's boy (to the detriment of his love life). He was ahead of his times saying that baseball was a game for all in reference to African Americans not being in the game yet. I was sad at the end of the this book because yet I knew that Gehrig would eventually die of ALS I didn't now how much hope that he was going to break this disease and kept saying he was "fifty-fifty" even when he was on his deathbed.
basedonmark's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
4.5
mahonp92's review against another edition
5.0
A moving biography, truly makes you appreciate of the legend.
firerosearien's review against another edition
4.0
A very readable biography of Gehrig that doesn't strain credulity with a subject that is so easy to mythologize. I will be honest, despite being a huge baseball fan, I was more intrigued with the biography's latter half, which becomes a discussion of ALS and the treatments offered at the time (just like today, there is no cure, but this was especially insidious at a time when medicine was making huge leaps and bounds, even more than now).
eeyore031370's review against another edition
3.0
⭐️⭐️⭐️This book tells the story of Lou Gehrig. He was a baseball player who developed ALS and died. I was interested in this because I have watched Pride of the Yankees and my Mom passed away from ALS in 2018.
bobbo49's review against another edition
3.0
While the basics of Lou Gehrig's story are known to every serious baseball fan, Eig's accountof his life and death adds many details to the account (did you know that Gehrig hit a home run on the very next pitch after Ruth's "called shot" in the World Series?), especially regarding ALS and Gehrig's final 18 months of life. Unfortunately, however, the story is told without much passion or depth; because Gehrig was such a private person, other than a treasure of letters to and from his doctors in the last year, not much of his inner life is revealed. Disappointing, on the whole.
socraticgadfly's review against another edition
5.0
Eig gets past some of the veil-hazed Gehrig mythos, especially about his two years in dealing with the knowledge of ALS.
By going into detail about Gehrig's initial visit to the Mayo Clinic, he makes it clear that, at the start, Gehrig knew more about this disease than the traditonal mythology portrayed. When he first gave his wife the news, in fact, it was him hiding some things from her, not the other way around.
True, she eventually did further research, but Eig relates nothing to support the myth that Mayo doctors were feeding here more realistic prognoses behind her back.
Rather, Gehrig, a bit like Ronald Reagan, *wanted* to believe -- and did. Yet, as Eig poignantly shows, he looked past his own web of deceit to the outside world his final months, as if he and his visitors were looking at some sort of inside joke whenever he said things like "fifty-fifty chance."
By going into detail about Gehrig's initial visit to the Mayo Clinic, he makes it clear that, at the start, Gehrig knew more about this disease than the traditonal mythology portrayed. When he first gave his wife the news, in fact, it was him hiding some things from her, not the other way around.
True, she eventually did further research, but Eig relates nothing to support the myth that Mayo doctors were feeding here more realistic prognoses behind her back.
Rather, Gehrig, a bit like Ronald Reagan, *wanted* to believe -- and did. Yet, as Eig poignantly shows, he looked past his own web of deceit to the outside world his final months, as if he and his visitors were looking at some sort of inside joke whenever he said things like "fifty-fifty chance."