A thoroughly entertaining exploration of baseball as a font of meaning.
Virtue, courage, beauty, justice—it’s all there on the baseball diamond, according to Sheppard’s lyrical paean to America’s enduring pastime.
In Homer’s Odyssey, the mighty Odysseus returns home from the Trojan War after vanquishing his foes only to find his wife Penelope surrounded by a bunch of pesky suitors bugging her to finally forget him and marry one of them. Definitely not one to shrink from a challenge, Odysseus (in disguise) proceeds to win the hand of his beloved by executing an incredible display of athletic prowess and virtuosity that immediately awes Ithaca’s populace. In the author’s careful estimation, this is the very same kind of excellence baseball legends like Willie Mays, Carlton Fisk, and Andre Dawson once exemplified in ballparks and stadiums all across the country. “Baseball can help us recover this essential sense of excellence. Every ball game tells once more the ancient story about virtue and victory that modern folk can witness with their own eyes,” Sheppard observes. A close examination of the Chicago Cubs’ remarkably dramatic 2016 World Series Championship win yields further authentic insights into baseball’s revelatory power to lay bare the human condition: “Even as we come to credit the truth of our victory, we still ask, what does it mean?” the author muses. Such lofty sentiments might strike some as being overly romanticized if they were not accompanied by Sheppard’s earnest and very personal reflections on what the game of baseball has always meant to him. He shares this love of the game (and of the Chicago Cubs in particular) with daughter Cecilia as she grows, and their dynamic is enough to hook any reader—whether they understand what made Nolan Ryan such an intimidating force on the mound or not. “I have cultivated a connoisseurship of the game and indulged in a fanatical passion for the Cubs,” the unabashed author confesses. “I have given baseball the same quality of attention that priests give to scripture, that Buddhist monks give to sutras, that the ancient philosophers gave to Homer’s epic poems.” Sheppard may have long ago given up his Catholic conception of God, but he still worships the game of baseball.
A thoroughly entertaining exploration of baseball as a font of meaning.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453041
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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