Magnificent.... All this is only to touch on the wealth of research, detail and astuteness of observation that make up The Big Fella . Some of it is sad.... But the winning side of the Babe’s life predominates in these pages and in history.” — Wall Street Journal
“Captures Ruth’s outsize influence on American sport and culture.... Leavy’s conceit allows her to stake out some untrod turf. But she also makes a compelling case that to appreciate the adulation Ruth soaked up in October 1927 is to understand his contribution to American life in full.” — New York Times Book Review
“An editor of mine once told me that each generation deserves its own biography of a historic figured, and we now have ours for Babe Ruth…Offers depth and nuance to the Bambino’s character….Leavy convincingly shows how Ruth embodied the Jazz Age, rebelling against all constraints both on and off the field while serving as the precursor to Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and the other athletes who would become multimedia conglomerates.” — Boston Globe
“Jane Leavy writing a book about Babe Ruth is the biggest thing that has happened in my life since Santa Claus visited my classroom in the second grade. This is Babe Ruth off the diamond and out of uniform, a very flawed human being but still very much a hero, a man who could lift an army of beggars and wannabes onto his back and carry them to their dreams.” — Bill James, Baseball Writer
“Does the world need another biography of Babe Ruth? If it’s this one, then the answer is an emphatic yes.” — Kirkus ( starred review)
“Engaging.... Sifts through the myths.... Leavy shines light on Ruth’s place in American cultural history. She paints a sensitive and humorous portrait of a flamboyant figure who exploited technological transformations, public appetites and his athletic prowess to forge a new sporting celebrity.” — Washington Post
“Leavy’s newest masterpiece ... delivers all the goods again. Meticulously researched over eight years and richly detailed, it’s as close as we’ll ever come to meeting the legend and watching him in action. The Big Fella is a must-read for Babe Ruth fans, baseball history buffs, and collectors. Above all, it is a major work of American history by an author with a flair for mesmerizing story-telling. — Forbes
“There have been numerous books written about the enormous life of Babe Ruth.... Jane Leavy, though, manages to mine new material in her wonderful book.... Ultimately, Leavy provides a different perspective of a man who consistently broke the mold in sports and society.” — Chicago Tribune
“Fascinating…reveals Ruth’s pioneering role in modern celebrity.” — The Guardian
“The Big Fella , beyond being the premiere biography about the King of Crash, is a book for all history buffs, not just fans of the New York Yankees, baseball, or sports in general.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“Monumental.... Leavy writes lovely, lively sentences and, as in her other big baseball biographies, of Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle, coordinates her head with her heart. Her research is thorough, and she works the material hard. She knows the score. She likes her subjects sometimes despite it, or comes to like them, or to feel sympathy for them.... As Nick Carraway is to Jay Gatsby, Jane Leavy is to Babe Ruth, who represents everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. She persuaded me to cut him some slack.” — National Review
“What sets ‘The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created’ apart from earlier attempts to identify the true essence of the man is an unprecedented look back into Ruth’s long-neglected childhood and a magnified focus on how his tremendous popularity helped birth the cult of personality in America.” — Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun
“Leavy always entertains, injecting necessary context about a sport that was just beginning to become a major advertising and marketing vehicle. She also evokes sympathy for the Babe ... without excusing his sins and excesses. Leavy brings the larger-than-life slugger down to the size of a real human being.” — New York Magazine
“The Big Fella is just amazing. Filled with fabulous tales. Tell me you wouldn’t have wanted to follow the Bambino around on a barnstorming tour in 1927. Now you can!” — Jayson Stark
“Jane Leavy could write the biography of a tube of toothpaste and I’d be first in line to buy it. Jane Leavy on Babe Ruth? Home run! Think you know the Babe? Not a chance—not until you read The Big Fella.” — Jonathan Eig, author of Ali and Luckiest Man
“Leavy has cleared the bases with a compelling account of the game’s greatest, Babe Ruth. Leavy brilliantly describes the complexities that accompany an elite talent and the blessing and curse of stardom while documenting the essential role of an attorney to provide vision, create a protective umbrella, and facilitate the most important goal for a unique athlete: self-understanding.” — Scott Boras, attorney for Major League Baseball Players
“Covers all aspects of Ruth’s massive life, bringing true empathy and impressive depth of knowledge to her complex subject.” — Boston Globe
“Proves conclusively there really was room for another book on Babe Ruth, only because of Leavy’s usual diligent and extensive research.” — Daily News
“Early in her seminal Babe Ruth biography, The Big Fella , Jane Leavy, the gifted storyteller of bygone ballplayers, perfectly encapsulates his place at the intersection of America’s game, Americana and America today.... It’s hard to conceive of a baseball player being the most famous athlete in America, let alone the most famous person. And yet with a clever narrative that tells Ruth’s life story through the lens of his 21-city barnstorming tour with Lou Gehrig, Leavy doesn’t need to do any convincing that it’s true. The facts clearly support the premise.” — Jeff Passan, Yahoo Sports
“If you think you’ve read enough stories about Babe Ruth to last a lifetime, think again. If you haven’t yet read THE BIG FELLA, you’ve got some catching up to do.” — Steven Goldleaf, Bill James Online
“Entertaining and colorful.... Leavy’s captivating biography reveals Ruth as a man who swung his bat with the same purposeful abandon that he lived his life.” — Publishers Weekly , starred review
“The same insight and verve that attracted readers to Leavy’s portraits of Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax manifest themselves here as she traces the improbable transformation of the insecure little George into the imposing Sultan of Swat, master of the diamond and unparalleled national celebrity…. An American icon brought to life.” — Booklist , starred review
“Sweeping…. [The Sultan of Swat] comes to life in these pages.” — Newsday
“Simply the best sports biography I have ever read...convincingly makes the case that Ruth put down the template for modern celebrity.... If you want to understand the Kardashians and their effect on our culture, you have to understand Babe Ruth.” — The Progressive
“One rule of thumb personally adopted is I read anything Jane Leavy writes. She’s that good…. Leavy is an exquisite reporter and researcher, which melds with her prose to make for a wonderful gift.” — Detroit News
“Leavy, through dogged reporting and astute analysis, strips away many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding Ruth’s life. ... [She] spent eight years researching and writing her Ruth biography, and her care and diligence surface on every page.” — Christian Science Monitor
“Colorful.... This poignant life story reveals Babe Ruth warts and all.” — The Missourian
“Not only about baseball, but a richly detailed social history of America in the Roaring Twenties.” — The Durham Herald-Sun
“Remarkable…. enlightening and interesting.” — NY Sports Day
Praise for Jane Leavy:“The Last Boy is something new in the history of the histories of the Mick. It is hard fact, reported by someone greatly skilled at that craft...and presented so that the reader and not the author draws nearly all the conclusions.” — New York Times Book Review on The Last Boy
“This is one of the best sports biographies I have ever read. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, it reveals with stunning insight both the talents and the demons that drove Mickey Mantle, bringing him to life as never before.” — Doris Kearns Goodwin on The Last Boy
“The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed…. This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.” — Wall Street Journal on Sandy Koufax
“Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.” — Time on Sandy Koufax
“An exhaustively researched study that paints an intriguing portrait of the famously reclusive Dodger pitcher.” — Sports Illustrated on Sandy Koufax
“The Last Boy is something new in the history of the histories of the Mick. It is hard fact, reported by someone greatly skilled at that craft...and presented so that the reader and not the author draws nearly all the conclusions.” — The New York Times Book Review on The Last Boy
Engaging.... Sifts through the myths.... Leavy shines light on Ruth’s place in American cultural history. She paints a sensitive and humorous portrait of a flamboyant figure who exploited technological transformations, public appetites and his athletic prowess to forge a new sporting celebrity.
There have been numerous books written about the enormous life of Babe Ruth.... Jane Leavy, though, manages to mine new material in her wonderful book.... Ultimately, Leavy provides a different perspective of a man who consistently broke the mold in sports and society.
Magnificent.... All this is only to touch on the wealth of research, detail and astuteness of observation that make up The Big Fella . Some of it is sad.... But the winning side of the Babe’s life predominates in these pages and in history.
Leavy’s newest masterpiece ... delivers all the goods again. Meticulously researched over eight years and richly detailed, it’s as close as we’ll ever come to meeting the legend and watching him in action. The Big Fella is a must-read for Babe Ruth fans, baseball history buffs, and collectors. Above all, it is a major work of American history by an author with a flair for mesmerizing story-telling.
The Big Fella , beyond being the premiere biography about the King of Crash, is a book for all history buffs, not just fans of the New York Yankees, baseball, or sports in general.
The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed…. This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.
Wall Street Journal on Sandy Koufax
Sweeping…. [The Sultan of Swat] comes to life in these pages.
Praise for Jane Leavy:“The Last Boy is something new in the history of the histories of the Mick. It is hard fact, reported by someone greatly skilled at that craft...and presented so that the reader and not the author draws nearly all the conclusions.
New York Times Book Review on The Last Boy
This is one of the best sports biographies I have ever read. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, it reveals with stunning insight both the talents and the demons that drove Mickey Mantle, bringing him to life as never before.
Doris Kearns Goodwin on The Last Boy
Simply the best sports biography I have ever read...convincingly makes the case that Ruth put down the template for modern celebrity.... If you want to understand the Kardashians and their effect on our culture, you have to understand Babe Ruth.
The Big Fella is just amazing. Filled with fabulous tales. Tell me you wouldn’t have wanted to follow the Bambino around on a barnstorming tour in 1927. Now you can!
Leavy, through dogged reporting and astute analysis, strips away many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding Ruth’s life. ... [She] spent eight years researching and writing her Ruth biography, and her care and diligence surface on every page.
Christian Science Monitor
The Last Boy is something new in the history of the histories of the Mick. It is hard fact, reported by someone greatly skilled at that craft...and presented so that the reader and not the author draws nearly all the conclusions.
The New York Times Book Review on The Last Boy
An exhaustively researched study that paints an intriguing portrait of the famously reclusive Dodger pitcher.”
Sports Illustrated on Sandy Koufax
Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.
★ 2018-08-05
Does the world need another biography of Babe Ruth (1895-1948)? If it's this one, then the answer is an emphatic yes.
The ever excellent Leavy (The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood , 2010, etc.) brings her considerable depth of knowledge of sports history to her latest project. She also brings considerable empathy for a man who, though notably boorish, at least made an effort to be civilized. Ruth had reason not to be influenced by the world's niceties. After all, as Leavy writes, he was only 7 when his parents sent him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Orphans, Delinquent, Incorrigible, and Wayward Boys on the outskirts of Baltimore. As an adult, he was "six foot two and 215 pounds when he was in trim and made everyone else in uniform look like the boys who later played in youth leagues named for him." He was also decidedly unsubtle: He smashed and hurled and fielded balls with a giant's force, and he "taught America to think big—expect big." Much of the narrative is a fine you-are-there reconstruction of Ruth's big moments, including the 1927 race in which he smacked 60 home runs, led a Yankees four-game sweep of the World Series, and then went off barnstorming with friend and teammate Lou Gehrig. There's tragic inevitability aplenty in that friendship, but Ruth's end in particular, a terrible death to cancer, is particularly jarring. Fans of the latter-day Yankees should wince, too, at Ruth's excoriation of the designated hitter. After another World Series sweep in 1929, Ruth "was back to offering opinions on things he knew about, expressing his disdain for a proposal to add a tenth hitter to the batting order to hit for the pitcher. He said it would take all the strategy out of the game." A skilled strategist and nearly peerless player, Ruth proves himself worthy of, yes, yet another biography, this one warts-and-all but still admiring.
Sparkling, exemplary sports biography, shedding new light on a storied figure in baseball history.
Fascinating…reveals Ruth’s pioneering role in modern celebrity.
Captures Ruth’s outsize influence on American sport and culture.... Leavy’s conceit allows her to stake out some untrod turf. But she also makes a compelling case that to appreciate the adulation Ruth soaked up in October 1927 is to understand his contribution to American life in full.
New York Times Book Review
Jane Leavy writing a book about Babe Ruth is the biggest thing that has happened in my life since Santa Claus visited my classroom in the second grade. This is Babe Ruth off the diamond and out of uniform, a very flawed human being but still very much a hero, a man who could lift an army of beggars and wannabes onto his back and carry them to their dreams.
An editor of mine once told me that each generation deserves its own biography of a historic figured, and we now have ours for Babe Ruth…Offers depth and nuance to the Bambino’s character….Leavy convincingly shows how Ruth embodied the Jazz Age, rebelling against all constraints both on and off the field while serving as the precursor to Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and the other athletes who would become multimedia conglomerates.
The same insight and verve that attracted readers to Leavy’s portraits of Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax manifest themselves here as she traces the improbable transformation of the insecure little George into the imposing Sultan of Swat, master of the diamond and unparalleled national celebrity…. An American icon brought to life.
If you think you’ve read enough stories about Babe Ruth to last a lifetime, think again. If you haven’t yet read THE BIG FELLA, you’ve got some catching up to do.
Remarkable…. enlightening and interesting.
Proves conclusively there really was room for another book on Babe Ruth, only because of Leavy’s usual diligent and extensive research.
One rule of thumb personally adopted is I read anything Jane Leavy writes. She’s that good…. Leavy is an exquisite reporter and researcher, which melds with her prose to make for a wonderful gift.
Jane Leavy could write the biography of a tube of toothpaste and I’d be first in line to buy it. Jane Leavy on Babe Ruth? Home run! Think you know the Babe? Not a chance—not until you read The Big Fella.
Not only about baseball, but a richly detailed social history of America in the Roaring Twenties.
Early in her seminal Babe Ruth biography, The Big Fella , Jane Leavy, the gifted storyteller of bygone ballplayers, perfectly encapsulates his place at the intersection of America’s game, Americana and America today.... It’s hard to conceive of a baseball player being the most famous athlete in America, let alone the most famous person. And yet with a clever narrative that tells Ruth’s life story through the lens of his 21-city barnstorming tour with Lou Gehrig, Leavy doesn’t need to do any convincing that it’s true. The facts clearly support the premise.
An exhaustively researched study that paints an intriguing portrait of the famously reclusive Dodger pitcher.”
Leavy has cleared the bases with a compelling account of the game’s greatest, Babe Ruth. Leavy brilliantly describes the complexities that accompany an elite talent and the blessing and curse of stardom while documenting the essential role of an attorney to provide vision, create a protective umbrella, and facilitate the most important goal for a unique athlete: self-understanding.
Monumental.... Leavy writes lovely, lively sentences and, as in her other big baseball biographies, of Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle, coordinates her head with her heart. Her research is thorough, and she works the material hard. She knows the score. She likes her subjects sometimes despite it, or comes to like them, or to feel sympathy for them.... As Nick Carraway is to Jay Gatsby, Jane Leavy is to Babe Ruth, who represents everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. She persuaded me to cut him some slack.
What sets ‘The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created’ apart from earlier attempts to identify the true essence of the man is an unprecedented look back into Ruth’s long-neglected childhood and a magnified focus on how his tremendous popularity helped birth the cult of personality in America.”
Leavy always entertains, injecting necessary context about a sport that was just beginning to become a major advertising and marketing vehicle. She also evokes sympathy for the Babe ... without excusing his sins and excesses. Leavy brings the larger-than-life slugger down to the size of a real human being.
Colorful.... This poignant life story reveals Babe Ruth warts and all.
One rule of thumb personally adopted is I read anything Jane Leavy writes. She’s that good…. Leavy is an exquisite reporter and researcher, which melds with her prose to make for a wonderful gift.
Magnificent.... All this is only to touch on the wealth of research, detail and astuteness of observation that make up The Big Fella . Some of it is sad.... But the winning side of the Babe’s life predominates in these pages and in history.
There have been numerous books written about the enormous life of Babe Ruth.... Jane Leavy, though, manages to mine new material in her wonderful book.... Ultimately, Leavy provides a different perspective of a man who consistently broke the mold in sports and society.
Monumental.... Leavy writes lovely, lively sentences and, as in her other big baseball biographies, of Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle, coordinates her head with her heart. Her research is thorough, and she works the material hard. She knows the score. She likes her subjects sometimes despite it, or comes to like them, or to feel sympathy for them.... As Nick Carraway is to Jay Gatsby, Jane Leavy is to Babe Ruth, who represents everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. She persuaded me to cut him some slack.
Engaging.... Sifts through the myths.... Leavy shines light on Ruth’s place in American cultural history. She paints a sensitive and humorous portrait of a flamboyant figure who exploited technological transformations, public appetites and his athletic prowess to forge a new sporting celebrity.
Early in her seminal Babe Ruth biography, The Big Fella , Jane Leavy, the gifted storyteller of bygone ballplayers, perfectly encapsulates his place at the intersection of America’s game, Americana and America today.... It’s hard to conceive of a baseball player being the most famous athlete in America, let alone the most famous person. And yet with a clever narrative that tells Ruth’s life story through the lens of his 21-city barnstorming tour with Lou Gehrig, Leavy doesn’t need to do any convincing that it’s true. The facts clearly support the premise.
Magnificent.... All this is only to touch on the wealth of research, detail and astuteness of observation that make up The Big Fella . Some of it is sad.... But the winning side of the Babe’s life predominates in these pages and in history.
Leavy always entertains, injecting necessary context about a sport that was just beginning to become a major advertising and marketing vehicle. She also evokes sympathy for the Babe ... without excusing his sins and excesses. Leavy brings the larger-than-life slugger down to the size of a real human being.
There have been numerous books written about the enormous life of Babe Ruth.... Jane Leavy, though, manages to mine new material in her wonderful book.... Ultimately, Leavy provides a different perspective of a man who consistently broke the mold in sports and society.
Magnificent.... All this is only to touch on the wealth of research, detail and astuteness of observation that make up The Big Fella . Some of it is sad.... But the winning side of the Babe’s life predominates in these pages and in history.
In this audiobook, renowned sports writer Jane Leavy offers a fresh look at the life of legendary baseball great Babe Ruth. Leavy provides a warm and spirited reading of the introduction before Fred Sanders takes over as the primary narrator. Sanders immerses the listener in the details of Baltimore circa 1900, where young Babe Ruth grew up. From there, Ruth’s barnstorming tour with teammate Lou Gehrig in October of 1927 is used as a framing device to move through different periods of his life and celebrity. Sanders effortlessly handles this biography’s massive scope. His commanding voice captures Ruth’s larger-than-life status, but careful attention is also paid to the details that make Ruth sound less like a myth or more like real person. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2018 - AudioFile
