struggled to fit in, live up to the
expectations put on them and
ultimately find their identity.

■Just Kids from the Bronx:
Telling It the Way It Was: An
Oral History (Henry Holt and
Co.) is a collection of personal
stories about growing up in
the Bronx compiled by Arlene
Alda, herself a child of the New
York City borough. Alda, an
award-winning photographer
and author married to actor
Alan Alda (who is not Jewish),
interviewed more than 60 Bronx
natives, including Al Pacino,
Daniel Libeskind, Mary Higgins
Clark, Carl Reiner and Colin
Powell. Their words recall chron-
ologically the Bronx from the
early 20th century until today,
revealing a place where the
American promise was fulfilled.
■Award-winning New York
Times columnist and former for-
eign correspondent Roger Cohen
tells of his family's legacy in The
Girl from Human Street: Ghosts
of Memory in a Jewish Family
(Alfred A. Knopf). Culling from
family stories, letters and diaries,
Cohen weaves a wide-ranging
story, from his uncle's experience
in WWII Italy to the anomie of
European Jews before and after
the Holocaust, following them
from Lithuania to South Africa,
England, the United States and
Israel — all held together by the
thread of his mother's struggle
with manic depression.
■Internationally honored
for his short fiction, graphic
novels and screenplays, Etgar
Keret takes on nonfiction in The
Seven Good Years: A Memoir
(Riverhead Books), a memoir
spanning the years between the
birth of his son and the death of
his father. Keret's engaging, clev-
er style comes through clearly as
he tells of his Holocaust-survivor
parents, adored older brother
and ultra-Orthodox sister, his
strong wife and wise, tender
son. Translated from Hebrew,
the story is told through humor-
ous four- to five-page vignettes,
each short chapter making its
own statement ranging from the
absurd to the deep and poignant.
■The Year My Mother Came
Back (Algonquin) is Alice Eve
Cohen's memoir and love story
about parenthood, loss and
connection. With honesty and
humor, Cohen describes a par-
ticularly challenging period of
her life, when her late mother
seems to reappear to help her
find her way.

SPORTS
■Detroit knows a thing or two
about hosting a maccabiah, so The
Jewish Olympics: The History of the
Maccabiah Games by Ron Kaplan
(Skyhorse Publishing), should be
of special interest. Begun in 1932
with 390 Jewish athletes from 14
countries, the 2013 games brought
9,000 athletes from 78 countries to
compete in a celebration of Jewish
peoplehood and pride. Though deal-
ing with the games as a response
to anti-Semitism and in its Zionist
context, the book is primarily about
sports and the competitors, includ-
ing Olympians Mark Spitz, Mitch
Gaylord and former Pistons head
coach, Larry Brown.

SHICKTIG

RIS

LITIllE.CHADALLANII

THE OUTSIDERS `

MARK ROTHKO

Toward ao liald in rho Cloorel

ANNIE COHEN-SOLAL

.

.

ART
■Annie Cohen-Sohal paints a vivid
portrait of influential American
painter Mark Rothko in Mark
Rothko: Toward the Light in the
Chapel (Yale University Press). In
addition to his influence in the artis-
tic realm, Rothko was a man who
operated according to a strong set
of Jewish values, which he used to
impact social change. From a child-
hood riddled with anti-Semitism
to his years spent flourishing in the
New York art community, Rothko's
story as told by Cohen-Sohal is one
of struggle, perseverance and find-
ing strength in your values and
beliefs.
■ The lives of three immigrant art-
ists are explored in the compelling
narrative, Shocking Paris: Soutine,
Chagall and the Outsiders of
Montparnasse (Palgrave MacMillan)
by Stanley Meisler. The story's main
focus is Soutine, a Russian Jewish
painter regarded as the most talented
member of the school of Paris, who
left behind no written record of his
experiences. Meisler tells Soutine's
story in vivid detail gathered from
his paintings and anecdotes from
those who knew him.

• • • •Mi EMS

rtEADING
on page 36

Hometown Hero

A new book pitches

WWII as a lasting part

of Jewish slugger Hank

Greenberg's legacy.

Jacob Kamaras

JNS.org

B

aseball fans – especially in Detroit _
might most vividly remember Hank
Greenberg for his chase of Babe
Ruth's single-season home run record in
1938 and other impressive exploits on the
field. The smaller universe of Jewish base-
ball fans may remember him for sitting
out a crucial game on Yom Kippur decades
before Sandy Koufax would do the same.
But author John Klima
wants readers of any back-
ground to know the unsung
story of Greenberg's World
War II service.
Klima's recently pub-
lished book, The Game
Must Go On: Hank
Greenberg, Pete Gray and
the Great Days of Baseball
on the Home Front in
WWII (Thomas Dunne
Books) is about much
more than Greenberg. Yet
the Hall of Fame first base-
man and outfielder, who
won two Most Valuable
Player (MVP) awards and
two World Series championships with the
Detroit Tigers, is the centerpiece.
"I had wanted to write a baseball and
World War II book ..." Klima says in an
interview. If I was going to do something
long-form and narrative, then I needed a
character people could connect with, and
that character was Hank Greenberg."
After an initial army stint of half a year,
Greenberg was honorably discharged on
Dec. 5,1941, two days before Japan's attack
on Pearl Harbor. In a statement of epic pro-
portions, Greenberg voluntarily re-enlisted
in the Army Air Corps immediately after
the attack and did not return to Major
League Baseball (MLB) until the summer of
1945. Baseball's highest-paid player before
the war, Greenberg was the first Major
Leaguer to enlist, becoming the face of an
era that – with conscription depleting base-
ball of much of its top-tier talent – forever
changed the MLB and the entire American
professional sports landscape, Klima's book
argues.
"Hank Greenberg really represented
everything to everyone [despite enduring
anti-Semitism], and he represented every-
thing to the Jewish people before the war,
during the war and after the war," Klima
says. "And then the rest of the country,

even though they knew about him as an
American League MVP and a big slugger,
kind of embraced him, I think, the same
way that the Jewish population had in the
1930s, in the sense that Hank suddenly rep-
resented the ballplayer who left the privi-
leges of his life to go sacrifice and serve.
That was Hank's decision. Not only does he
end up representing the guy who served,
but then he ends up representing the sol-
dier who's coming back and putting his life
together."
Upon Greenberg's return to baseball in
1945, he hit a grand-slam home run that
clinched the American League pennant on
the last day of the season. The Tigers later
defeated the Chicago Cubs in the World
Series. But before his triumphant come-
back, the absence of Greenberg and other
stars like him opened the door for players
such as one-armed outfielder Pete Gray to
realize their dream of reach-
ing the Major Leagues.
In an anecdote that brings
the book's major protago-
nists together, Greenberg
and Gray "stood arm in
arm in the steady St. Louis
rain, talking softly for a few
moments" during the same
game Greenberg won with his
historic home run.
This was the image of
baseball in World War II,"
Klima writes. "The service-
man was thanking the tempo-
rary worker for keeping the
factory humming while he
was on. The hero got his life
back. The replacement was swept out the
door. Hank seemed to realize what few oth-
ers could, that both of them had helped win
the war in their own different ways."
Indeed, while players such as Greenberg
made their contributions on the battlefield,
the likes of Gray kept the game alive on the
baseball field and boosted both Americans'
morale at home and soldiers' morale over-
seas.
Greenberg's gesture in the season-ending
game against the St. Louis Browns – which
was also Gray's final MLB game – was as
grand as any home run he ever hit," Klima
writes.
"Hank had a very deep integrity about
him that transcended everything he did on
the field," Klima says. When Hank found
these moments of integrity, he just sailed
above everything.
"Hank is going to do what Hank knows
is right. That's really the essence of
Greenberg, and I think that's why people
are still drawn to him. That's why I'm drawn
to him. He's got tunnel-vision for the right
thing.
"I want everybody to know about Hank,"
Klima adds." I just think that they don't
make ballplayers like Hank Greenberg any-
more."

❑

July 16 • 2015

35