Rating: 
Summary: A HOME RUN!
Review: There's satire, there's irony and then there's plain "laugh out loud" funny. This is it. I bet a friend that if he wasn't laughing after the first few pages I'd read Tammy Faye Baker's biography. Like others, I know nothing about baseball and my WWII history isn't great, but it really didn't matter. This book is about relationships. The relationship between a man and a boy, a boy and his best friend, a man and a woman, a boy and a girl, and a boy and the FDR administration. Of course it's a little predictable, but it wasn't written so that book clubs could discuss it's metaphors and hidden meanings. The format is great and makes for a quick read. I couldn't put it down. You shouldn't pass it up.
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Summary: the best in a loooong time
Review: although predictable at times, this book was one of the best i have picked up in a while. i enjoyed the scrapbook format of the novel, making it a quick read and easy to pick up and put down if need be. you can't help but fall in love with the characters based on the way they write and the things they write--granted, the ending was predictable to me, i saw it coming, but it did not change how it affected me when i reached it. i can't remember the last time i read a book where i actually watched the characters grow up and mature within the pages.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Book
Review: Laugh out loud funny. Neither one of us is a huge baseball fan, but we thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters have such complex, interesting, quirky personalities that we wish we could know them in real life. We highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book!
Review: One of the best books I've read in a very long time. I've been a baseball fan for many years, so I truly enjoyed that aspect (even though I wouldn't catagorize this as a "baseball book"). But more than anything, I was deeply moved by the relationship between Joey Margolis and the other characters in the story, most importantly, of course, with Charlie Banks. How I wish I had had a hero like Charlie when I was Joey's age! I went though a range of emotions, from hysterical laughter to down-right sobbing. This was one of those rare books that you hate to see end. I highly recommend this book for everyone. You don't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this story.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the Best
Review: "Last Days of Summer" is a book that is a delight from start to finish. It immediately grabs with its format and, more importantly, with its story and characters. And these characters are easy to become enraptured with. This is an unsual book, with comedy and sadness, and with growth--by all of the key characters. It's a book that is so popular that my first copy continues to tour my friends--all of whom describe it as one of the best books they've read. Period. And while baseball plays a central role, this is not, at it's heart, a book about baseball--and a love of baseball is neither relevant nor required to enjoy this book. In fact, this book is so well written that those of us who wonder how baseball became America's pasttime will wonder if the game will ever have even one-half the magic of this book.
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Summary: PHENOMINAL BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I'm 13 and I absolutely HATE athletics of any kind. My mom brought this book home for me and i was like "why would i want to read it". It sat on my table for a while. One night i woke up at like 1am. I was not able to go back to bed, but didn't want to wake anyone else up with creaky floor boards. The book was next to my bead. i opened it and found the format of leters, memos, news clippings, and telegrams intriguing. I started at 1am. I didn't get out of bed untill about 8am. I didn't put the book down for a minute. It was great. I had to bite my tongue so as not to laugh. I cried too. I could not believe that a book could be so good. I actually liked the fact that bseball was tied in. DO NOT PASS THIS UP. READ THE BOOK. NOW. Dust.
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Summary: The word is marvelous! Pass it on!
Review: OY! Obviously, from the amount of positive reviews, people feel passionately about this book and want to tell the world. I am one of those people. Original, well-written, poignant, hysterically funny-you name it, this book's got it. There's no point trying to describe the book--one would only continue to add to a hopelessly inadequate string of superlatives. Check out the author photo too-for once, an author shares the limelight with someone special in his life. BUY THE BOOK, ALREADY!
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Summary: A Great Read!
Review: I absolutely LOVED this book! I could not put it down and I didn't want it to end. It's a collection of correspondence between a lonely, mischievous young boy and a major league baseball star, set in the early 1940's. But it's NOT about World War II or baseball. It's a lovely story of the relationship these 2 characters form - I would recommend it to anyone!!
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Summary: BUY IT, BUY IT, BUY IT, BUY IT, BUY IT, AND BUY IT YET AGAIN
Review: Sometimes it is fate or luck which places a book into your hands. How else to account for a year-old edition of a two-year-old book shelved in a section of the bookstore I don't normally browse ending up in mine? A mention of Coney Island on the cover, a first sentence that sounded like the beginning of a love letter to Brooklyn, USA, and I was hooked. But I had no idea what a true treasure I had just found.At its core, this is a simple tale of a boy and a man whose paths meet and merge, to the betterment of both. But it is so much more: it is a tribute to baseball, Broadway, babes, the boys in the Service -- and, yes, Brooklyn. It is a paean to all that is right and good about people: friendship, loyalty, bravery, decency, honor, commitment, and love. Precocious twelve-year-old Joey Margolis, a Brooklyn Jew in a largely Italian neighborhood in the early 1940s, is sorely in need of a protector -- a big brother, a father figure. Charlie Banks, a mid-western Protestant, is a hot-tempered, immensely talented rookie third baseman for the NY Giants and sorely in need of a conscience that includes more than his skills with bat and glove. They tell their tale in a series of letters, newspaper clippings, box scores and matchbook covers, an interesting and entirely successful technique for a writer whose prior work includes a number of screen, stage and teleplays. It is also not surprising that much of his work revolves around baseball, Broadway, the boys in the Service -- and, yes, Brooklyn. He clearly loves the stuff. It is a kind and gentle tale of a time that may not have been much simpler or innocent but was certainly, well, kinder and gentler. I laughed and cried, often on the same page, sometimes at the same time, as the two different temperaments, cultures and faiths clash with and ultimately absorb each other. Joey, Charlie, the women who love them, the teacher and principal who fear them, the rabbi who worries for them, and the President and First Lady who respect them, leap into the mind, heart and soul never looking back, and setting up permanent residence. Run, do not walk, to your nearest bookseller and get a copy of this book. No -- get two, one for yourself and one for someone you love.
Rating:
Summary: A Tribute to Surrogate Fathers
Review: I read the first half of this wonderful book in several sittings, and read the second half today. I had tears streaming down my face from laughter...and then from the poignancy. I just placed an order for this book to be sent to my stepfather. The story of the love that developed between Joey Margolis and Charlie Banks is representative of so many good men, like my stepfather, who stepped up to the plate when absent fathers did not. It was such a beautiful story that will hit a certain target audience squarely in the heart. Thank you, Steve Kluger, for expressing the heroism of the surrogate father better than the rest of us ever could. From my heart. "I love you Bucko."
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