Baseball: An Illustrated History; Based on a Documentary Filmscript

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Stated First Edition. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. very good/very good. 28 cm, 486 pages profusely illus. with over 500 photographs (many in color), Selected bibliography, Index. Kenneth Lauren "Ken" Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs in documentary films. His most widely known documentaries are The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), and The Roosevelts (2014). Burns' documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards and have won Emmy Awards, among other honors. Geoffrey Champion Ward (born 1940) is an American editor, author, historian and writer of scripts for documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 18 books, including five companion books to the documentaries he has written. He is the winner of seven Emmy Awards. Ward has collaborated with co-producer Ken Burns on most of the documentaries he has made, including Baseball. This work has garnered him five Emmy Awards. He also won two Emmys for the American Experience series, including The Kennedys, in 1992 and TR,The Story of Theodore Roosevelt in 1996. In 2006, the Organization of American Historians gave Ward their Friend of History Award for his outstanding contributions to American history. "Baseball: An Illustrated History" is the companion volume to the acclaimed public television series. In photographs, interviews, essays, and histories, the authors explore the national pastime from the mid-19th century to the present day. Includes essays by Roger Angell, Buck O'Neil, Doris Kearns Goodwin, George F. Will, and many others. It includes an interview with Buck O'Neil.During eight months of the year, it is played professionally every day; all year round, amateurs play it, watch it, and dream about it. Baseball produces remarkable Americans: it seizes hold of ordinary people and shapes them into something we must regard with awe. Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio . . . truly gifted human beings acting out universal fantasies that, for whatever reason, are most perfectly expressed on a baseball field.All this and more rings through Ward and Burns's moving, crowded, fascinating history of the game - a history that goes beyond stolen bases, triple plays, and home runs to demonstrate how baseball has been influenced by, and has in turn influenced our national life: politics, race, labor, big business, advertising, and social custom. The audio covers every milestone of the game: from the rules drawn up in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright to the founding of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players in 1885, from the 1924 Negro World Series through Jack Roosevelt Robinson's major-league debut in 1947, and Nolan Ryan's seventh and last no-hitter in 1991.