Please don’t miss this book. The only reason I got it was because I love Bryson.  (If you haven’t read A WALK IN THE WOODS, do so immediately and be prepared to laugh your butt off.  I love this guy.)

But I’m not big on history, baseball, or aviation, so what happened in 1927 was just about last on my list of things to give a shit about.  I told myself to not bother, but thank God I don’t listen to myself.  First of all, baseball. This is not your ordinary history of baseball.  Much like PERFECT STORM, where the author made a bunch of weather reports riveting and suspenseful reading, ONE SUMMER snags its readers with unexpected connections and details. I’ve always been impressed with Bryson’s research, but this time, he’s outdone himself. The book drips with incredible statistics and little-known juicy facts – and not just about Babe Ruth, although Babe would have been plenty.

Just when I started to think that this was the book for my Yankee-obsessed friends, straight-laced nerdy Charles Lindbergh shows up and steals the plot away from Ruth, and I think I must tell my friend Kevin about this book because he will love all the aviation stuff. Even I am amazed that early pilots actually flew in those rickety contraptions made out of balsam wood and paper which often went up in a ball of flames.

But then somehow, Bryson manages to bring in Henry Ford and the sketchy transition from the Model T to the Model A (Those letters mean nothing, by the way.), the execution of Sacco & Vanzetti (They may not be as innocent as we have been led to believe …), the advent of the “talkies”, and the original Ponzi scheme. Did you know there really was a guy named Ponzi?  He built his house of cards with postage stamps.

It all coalesces into a completely understandable combination of fascinating stories, interwoven into a solid experience that sent me back to the library to get a couple of his older books that I missed.

ONE SUMMER is a perfect perfect book for guys, full of machinery and gore, kidnapping, explosions, speed, competition, politics, sports, booze, and lust.  Actually, I like all those things myself.  Except for baseball.  I don’t much care for baseball.