Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney,

by Irwin Silber

Book Overview

Long before Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a Brooklyn Dodger contract in 1945, Lester Rodney, the newly hired and first sports editor of the Communist Daily Worker, launched the campaign that... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566399742
• ISBN13: 9781566399746
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Really good

Irwin Silber's biography of Lester Rodney is an excellent book about sports, particularly baseball. And though I'm hardly a baseball fan, the style and subject are snappy and engaging. More importantly, Press Box Red explains the activist campaign mounted to desegregate baseball and the far-reaching affects of breaking the color line in "America's pastime". Rodney's anecdotal story-telling and vignettes of great ballplayers--Black and white--reads more like a sports column than a history book. This is also a wonderful insight into a little explored dynamic of Communist Party, though a bit more background on the Party could have been provided for the reader unfamiliar.