Rating: 
Summary: This book is filled with bittersweet nostalgia.
Review: Whether you are a baseball fan or not, forty-somethings andolder will love this book, which so movingly evokes a simpler, truly more innocent time. Goodwin has put her skills as a historian to great use as she details some of the most important events of the '50's, including the McCarthy hearings, the Cold War buildup, and of course the Dodger-Yankee rivalries of those days. Most poignant, perhaps, is her sweet, childlike admiration of Jackie Robinson. At some level, she understood his role in lowering racism's barriers just a little, but mostly she saw only a superior athlete. Further, her ability to convey to the reader just how her love of baseball, a wonderful gift from her father, contributed to her abilities as a historian was a real bonus.
Rating:
Summary: This book is filled with bittersweet nostalgia.
Review: Whether you are a baseball fan or not, forty-somethings and older will love this book, which so movingly evokes a simpler, truly more innocent time. Goodwin has put her skills as a historian to great use as she details some of the most important events of the '50's, including the McCarthy hearings, the Cold War buildup, and of course the Dodger-Yankee rivalries of those days. Most poignant, perhaps, is her sweet, childlike admiration of Jackie Robinson. At some level, she understood his role in lowering racism's barriers just a little, but mostly she saw only a superior athlete. Further, her ability to convey to the reader just how her love of baseball, a wonderful gift from her father, contributed to her abilities as a historian was a real bonus.
Rating:
Summary: Only One Disappointment
Review: Wait 'Til Next Year is a wonderful book-quite possibly the best I have read this year. I have only one disappointment. Goodwin is my favorite historian, and from now on, whenever I read from one of her books, I will want to hear one more story from the neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Rating:
Summary: This book deserves a 10+
Review: Doris Kearns Goodwin has written an endearing book on her growing up in the fifties. My 10 plus rating certainly has been effected by the fact that I too grew up in the fifties, was a Brooklyn Dodger fan, and was raised Catholic. Her relationship with her father and mother stand out to me. Prospective parents would benefit from reading about how she received love from both her mother and her father despite past and present family difficulties. During the early fifties it seemed like the Dodgers were never going to win a World Series. But in 1955 it finally happened. Ms. Goodwin writes so vividly about the day of the Brooklyn victory in October of that year. The agony of the Bobby Thompson homer, the scare of polio, her innocent and diverse neighborhood, the fear of nuclear attack, the beauty of non-free-agent, non-exhorbitant salary baseball are all deftly written about. Her first confession and first communion stories will be enjoyed whether or not you know much about the pre-Vatican II Catholic church. I found myself laughing and crying a lot as walked through Doris' childhood. I really regretted reaching the last page knowing the journey and the joy had come to an end.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Terrific
Review: I think Doris Kearns Goodwin could write a fascinating book about grass growing. She is a superb writer -- do yourselves a favor and read her other books as well. "No Ordinary Time" should be read by all who love American history.
Rating:
Summary: An engaging memoir of growing up in the 1950's
Review: A superb memoir of growing up when times were simpler. There were mom and pop stores, both parents did not have to work and the Dodgers still resided in Brooklyn. This book should be on every Young Adult list also. Goodwin deals with friendship, Catholic guilt and loss of a parent. I can't think of a better portrait of what it was like to grow up in the 1950's.
Rating:
Summary: Where Has Joe DiMaggo Gone ? - A Time Gone With Wind
Review: Anyone that grew up in the 50,s loved baseball,and attended a catholic gradeschool has to read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Sensitive but disappointing
Review: Doris Kearns Goodwin's memoir is a sensitive, captivating portrait of a bygone era, one not likely to return. The book is marred, if only slightly, by her mistaken reference to Don Newcombe as "the third black player to join the Dodgers after [Jackie] Robinson's debut in 1947 and [Roy] Campanella's arrival the following year..." In 1947, Negro Leaguer Dan Bankhead, a 27-year-old right handed pitcher was brought up by the Dodgers. He had an undistinguished record in four games. But Bankhead, not Campanella, was the second black player on the Dodgers. That historian Goodwin would make such an obvious error (at least obvious to veteran Dodger fans) is disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent view of Ms. Kearns' early life.
Review: Ms. Kearns has given a wonderful review of the Dogers of the later 40's and the 1950's. Her descriptions of the highs and lows of those Dodger years made it seem as if I were reading them for the first time.. Though at a much older age, (39) I have also lost my mother and her description of her relationship with her mom brought tears to my eyes. Ms. Goodwin's works hold a special place in my library and this book belongs with the rest of them. George Hecker:
Tooksfirst@aol.com:
Philadelphia, Pa.
Rating:
Summary: It was the best of time and the worst of times.
Review: In the aftermath of a World Championship, Wayne Huizenga starts his Florida Marlins fire sale. Alou, Nen, maybe Leiter, Sheffield and Brown all gone. A Kingfish gutted so the trophy weighs in on the scales of the new baseball "economy." The contrast to a time when a young Doris Kearns Goodwin could pencil in a line-up by heart, year after year after year. Doris Kearns Goodwin speaks to these long gone times, when life - on the surface - seemed a whole lot simpler. But the beauty of this look back is its 20/20 hindsight. She owns no rose-colored glasses. For every Norman Rockwell glimpse into her Long Island suburban neighborhood, there's a story of the chilling McCarthy-style inquisitions she and her friends would stage to cut to the core of their young phyches. For every heart warming tale of the corner butchers who knew her by a pet nickname, there's the very real horror of planning a community bomb shelter in the butcher shop's basement in, case someone dropped The Big One. She combines the warmest of memories for Carl Furillo's cannon arm with the looming nuclear shadow of Nikita Khruschev. Get it straight. This is far more than another baseball memoir. Baseball is the backdrop, the metaphor for life with the Baltimore Catechism, a mother with a bad heart, and a school divided into teams of Red and Blue, not black and white. It's particularly appropriate in this anniversary year honoring Jackie Robinson. The wonderful innocence of hero worshiping a black man in an era of clearly unequal rights. For me, it was the massive Luke Easter, as powerful in his 40s as Robinson was fleet in his prime. We were too young to understand bigotry. Again, Goodwin can retell the coming of age simultaneously at a time when discrimination was still a way of life for so many. Finally, the weaving together of a family's story with the threads of baseball's twists and turns resonated with me. If you grew up in the 50s, you'll find a very familiar world in Goodwin's Long Island. You'll see the issues we still deal with today, just beginning to surface. The Dodgers were about to move to LA. And yesterday, Florida peddled one more piece of its championship puzzle. After all, it's all about business. If you're looking for a photo albums filled with snapshots of the 50's, warts and all, this book is a great place to start.
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