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Book summary and reviews of Clemente by David Maraniss

Clemente by David Maraniss

Clemente

The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero

by David Maraniss

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  • Published:
  • Apr 2006
    416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

On New Year's Eve, 1972, following eighteen magnificent seasons in the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero's death, killed in a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. David Maraniss now brings the great baseball player brilliantly back to life in Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, a book destined to become a modern classic. Much like his acclaimed biography of Vince Lombardi, When Pride Still Mattered, Maraniss uses his narrative sweep and meticulous detail to capture the myth and a real man.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Maraniss deftly balances baseball and loftier concerns like racism; he presents a nuanced picture of a ballplayer more complicated than the encomiums would suggest, while still wholly deserving them." - PW.
"A nuanced, expertly written life of much more than a sports hero." - Kirkus.

This information about Clemente was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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joeoc123

Maraniss Clears the Bases with "Clemente"
David Maraniss' "Clemente" is another great portrayal of an outstanding sports figure who also happened to be a person to be emulated, not matter what his profession. Like Maraniss' account of Vince Lombardi in "When Pride Still Mattered", Clemente is perfectly portrayed with both flaws and heroics, both inside and outside the game. We see Roberto as he truly was, never selling himself short, never compromising principles that all of us would do well to live by.

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Author Information

David Maraniss Author Biography

Author photograph by Lisa Berg

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s – Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lucas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History). A Good American Family is his twelfth book.

Author Interview
Link to David Maraniss's Website

Other books by David Maraniss at BookBrowse
  • When Pride Still Mattered jacket
  • They Marched Into Sunlight jacket

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