Explaining why reporters loved to write about Montague, the author declares, “Intrigue is a better seller than great golf...
Critics who think bestselling sports biographer Montville’s popularity rests on that of his gargantuan subjects, from Ted Williams to Dale Earnhardt, had better think again: He hits the pin in one with this page-turning account of a long-forgotten golfer.
John Montague (1904–72) achieved mythic status in mid-1930s Hollywood when word got out that he had beaten Bing Crosby at a hole—some said an entire round—at the prestigious Lakeside Golf Club using a baseball bat, a shovel and a rake instead of a golf club. This curiously secretive, camera-shy crackpot could knock birds off telephone wires from 175 yards and drive the ball 350 yards in an age when woods were still made of wood. Major sportswriters of the period like Grantland Rice figured largely in introducing to the world this “Sphinx of the Links,” demonstrates Montville (The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, 2006, etc.) in an adroit tale that is as much about its tellers as their subject. “The Phantom of the Fairways” made great copy: He “moved with a mixture of menace and mirth” and had been witnessed on several occasions picking up 303-pound Oliver Hardy and depositing him on the Lakeside’s bar using only one hand. In fact, were it not for the national media attention Montague’s antics garnered, he probably never would have been arrested in 1937 and charged with having committed armed robbery in upstate New York seven years earlier. Montague confessed that he was LaVerne Moore of Syracuse, N.Y., and admitted fleeing to California after his golf bag was found in one of the gunmen’s crashed car. On the witness stand, however, he denied having anything to do with the robbery. Montville’s cinematic recounting of the trial and its aftermath will make readers feel like they’re right there in the courtroom.
Explaining why reporters loved to write about Montague, the author declares, “Intrigue is a better seller than great golf any day.” Here, he gives readers both.Pub Date: May 6, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-52033-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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