Roger Kahn

Roger Kahn
Born	Roger Kahn (1927-10-31) October 31, 1927 (age 84) Brooklyn, New York, United States
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Notable work(s)	The Boys of Summer, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and The Roaring Twenties; The Head Game: Baseball Seen from the Pitcher's Mound; Good Enough to Dream; The Passionate People: What It Means to be a Jew in America; Into My Own: The Remarkable People and Events That Shaped a Life
Influences Robert Frost, Ring Lardner, Thomas Hardy, Vergil
www.rogerkahn.com

Roger Kahn (born 31 October 1927) is an American author, best known for his writings on baseball and for his widely-acclaimed 1972 memoir, The Boys of Summer.A Sports Illustrated panel has selected The Boys of Summer as the greatest of all baseball books.

Biography

Kahn's family first settled in the New York area in 1848, and he was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. Kahn attended Froebel Acaemy, a prep school then Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn.^[1] Kahn has worked as a journalist, author, editor, and teacher. In 2004, he was named as the fourth James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professor of Journalism at SUNY New Paltz.^[2]

Kahn describes his background as a mix of Alsatian Catholic Jewish and Russian Jewish Marxist, and himself as a 100 per cent American agnostic. He lives in the Hudson Valley community of Stone Ridge, New York with his wife, Katharine Colt Johnson, a psychotherapist. He has two adult children, Alissa and Gordon.^[3] He was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame on April 30, 2006.^[4]

Writing career

Kahn began his newspaper career in 1948, when he took a job as copy boy for the New York Herald Tribune. A keen Dodgers fan, he reported on their games over the 1952 and 1953 seasons. He became sports editor for Newsweek in 1956, and editor-at-large of the Saturday Evening Post in 1963. His best-known book, The Boys of Summer, was published in 1972. The book examines his relationship with his father seen through the prism of their shared affection for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Roger Kahn at the Miami Book Fair International of 1989

In addition to The Boys of Summer, recently optioned for a Broadway play, Kahn wrote books such as Good Enough to Dream, a chronicle of his year as the owner of a minor league baseball franchise; The Era 1947-57, an examination of the decade during which the three New York clubs - the Dodgers, Yankees and Giants - dominated Major League Baseball; and Memories of Summer, a look back at his youth and early career, plus extended pieces on New York baseball legends Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. His biography of the heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey, A Flame of Pure Fire, is under development as a motion picture by 33 Productions of San Francisco.^{[citation needed]}

Kahn's latest book, Into My Own (published June 2006) is a memoir describing friendships with Robert Frost, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Eugene McCarthy, and his late son, Roger Laurence Kahn, who suffered from bipolar disorder and heroin addiction, and who died by his own hand from carbon monoxide poisoning in 1987. In its last chapter titled Rescuing Roger, Kahn writes candidly about his own and his family's experiences with Michael DeSisto and the DeSisto School^[5][6] and the subsequent harm to his son Roger.

Kahn cites as his journalism influences, Stanley Woodward, John Lardner, and Red Smith. He has won the E. P. Dutton Award for best sports magazine article of the year five times outright, and tied for first once. No one else has matched that winning total.

Summing up commentary on Into My Own, the Washington Post Book World rerpoted: "Proves that Kahn is not only a great baseball writer, but something rarer: a great writer whose subject just happens to be baseball."

Bibliography

• Mutual Baseball Almanac (1955), edited with Al Helfer
• The World of John Lardner (1961), edited
• Inside Big League Baseball (1962)
• The Passionate People: What it Means to be a Jew in America (1968)
• Battle for Morningside Heights: Why Students Rebel (1970)
• The Boys of Summer (1972)
• How the Weather Was (1973)
• A Season in the Sun (1977)
• But Not to Keep: A Novel (1979)
• The Seventh Game (1982)
• Good Enough to Dream (1985)
• Joe & Marilyn: A Memory of Love (1986)
• Pete Rose: My Story (1989), with Pete Rose
• Games We Used to Play: A Lover's Quarrel with the World of Sport (1992)
• The Era: 1947-1957, When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World (1993)
• Memories of Summer: When Baseball was an Art and Writing About it a Game (1993)
• A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and The Roaring Twenties (1999)
• [The Head Game: Baseball Seen from the Pitcher's Mound]] (2000)
• October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees' Miraculous Finish in 1978 (2002)
• Into My Own: The Remarkable People and Events That Shaped a Life (2006)

References

1. ^ "The Rumble: An Off-The-Ball Look at Your Favorite Sports Celebrities", New York Post, December 31, 2006. Accessed December 13, 2007. "The five Erasmus Hall of Fame legends include Raiders owner Al Davis, Bears quarterback Sid Luckman, Yankee pitching great Waite Hoyt, Billy Cunningham and Knicks founder Ned Irish. Other sports notables include Bulls/White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, chess champion Bobby Fischer, ex-Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano, legendary NBA referee Norm Drucker and "The Boys of Summer" author Roger Kahn."
2. ^ "State University of New York at New Paltz: James H. Ottaway Sr. Endowed Professorship - Past Professors - 2004 - Roger Kahn", State University of New York at New Paltz official website. Accessed 5 February 2012
3. ^ "Roger Kahn biography", Roger Kahn official website. Accessed 5 February, 2012.
4. ^ http://www.jewishsports.org/jewishsports/detail.asp?sp=181
5. ^ <&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CA0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=roger%20kahn%20into%20my%20own%20desisto&f=false "Into My Own" Google Books
6. ^ Daytona Beach Morning Journal - Aug 9, 1980

External links

• Roger Kahn's Official Website
• Excerpt from article about The Boys of Summer