Product Description
Lou Gehrig's perseverance is legendary. During fourteen years as a first baseman for the New York Yankees, he played in a record 2,130 consecutive games, earning himself the nickname Iron Horse. Lou loved baseball and considered himself a very lucky man, even though on his thirty-sixth birthday he was diagnosed with a rare and fatal disease.
Amazon.com Review
The story of Lou Gehrig, the heroic Yankee who battled withALS, was inspirational far beyond Yankee Stadium. David Adler's sparebiography tells Gehrig's story just as the athlete lived: withunassuming simplicity. It's a wise choice, since the story is soaffecting on its own. Another wise choice was Adler's decision toremain vague about the details of Gehrig's illness. The story is noless affecting without them, and probably contains enough sadness forany child. As good as this book is, Terry Widener's illustrationsmultiply its impact enormously.

[Recommended for ages 5-9. Older siblings will probably be willing to hang around to hear it though.] ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

helpful in ways i didn't expect
I bought this book for the illustrations, but then my husband was diagnosed with A.L.S. (Lou Gehrig's disease) and the only way I could explain the illness to my 6-year-old son was through this book.We read it over and over again.And feeling that his dad was like the "luckiest man" somehow made the whole horrible thing easier for him to grasp.Probably not the author's intent at all, but I'm grateful for David Adler's spare and eloquent text.If only there'd been something like it for my two older boys. . .

I love this Book!
I first read this book in my niece's school book. After I read just some of it I knew I had to buy it. This story tells how Lou Gehrig was as a baseball player and a person. It was really inspiring and good and it had me in tears at the end. I would recommend this book to anyone and I am going to pass these on to my grandchildren too so they will know who Lou Gehrig was.

Lou Gehrig
I understood how Lou Gehrig died. I thought he was one of the best basball players. He was really calm when the doctor said he was going to die. I thought he was one of the best basball players who have everjoined the yankes team.

Lou Gehrig The Luckiest Man
I enjoyed this story because Lou Gehrig never missed a day of school. Later,when he grew up,he enjoyed playing sports,he would always get up early to play sports. When he reached college, he had to skip it to play baseball. His team was the Yankees. He had a disease and died on June 2,1941. The setting was in the Yankee's stadium and in his funeral. The conflict of the story is Lou wanted to play baseball. The resolution of the story is Lou skipped college to play with the Yankee's team.

Age appropriate - you decide
Amazon does list this book as reading level 4-8. Perhaps the author intended this to be appropriate for 4-year-olds. Adler is a very experienced children's book author (i.e. Cam Jansen series) and would not have unintentionally written it specifically for this age level.
My father was diagnosed with "Lou Gehrig's Disease" at the age of 43. I was 5. A book like this would have been very age appropriate for me. I just wish the only way I had learned about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was in a book. ... Read more

Product Description
"All these many years down the road, Lou Gehrig's reputation still holds up—as does Ray Robinson's elegant biography."—Bob Costas

Lou Gehrig will go down in history as one of the best ballplayers of all time; he was elected to the Hall of Fame and played in a record-setting 2,130 consecutive games. ALS—known today as "Lou Gehrig's Disease"—robbed him of his physical skills at a relatively young age, and he died in 1941. Ray Robinson re-creates the life of this legendary ballplayer and also provides an insightful look at baseball, including all the great players of that era: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and more. 16 photographs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Still a good read
Although the recent Jonathan Eig biography has pretty much surpassed Robinson's book in terms of research and accuracy, for the better part of the past two decades, Robinson's biography was the best Gehrig book on the market. It tells a nice little story about both the remarkable ballplayer and man; it's a quick and easy read without any of the corny fabricated dialogue or "puffing" previous treatments had given the subject -- both Frank Graham's and, worse, Paul Gallico's versions -- and you come away with a good sense of who Lou Gehrig was, warts and all. Where Robinson's bio will always have the upper hand over Eig's, though, is through personal experiences. Robinson opens the book with his own story of how he met the Iron Horse as a boy -- he was also in the bleachers the day of Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech -- and, in terms of sources, Robinson had time on his side. The book was initially published in 1990, when a handful of Gehrig's closest acquaintances from the seminal events in his life were still alive -- and thus could be interviewed and share personal anecdotes (whereas Eig had to rely on secondhand information, old newspaper accounts, and the few tangential relations that were left). Which is to say, it's still very much worth a read, definitely recommended.

Readable and Insightful
This is a very readable and personal biography of baseball's Iron Horse.As many know, slugger Lou Gherig (1903-1941) was one of baseball's all-time greats, with 493 homers (23 grand slams), a lifetime batting average of .340, plus a .447 On-base-average and .632 Slugging percentage.Gherig's record 2,130 straight games played (finally eclipsed by Cal Ripken in 1995) would have continued if not for the onset of the fatal disease that now bears his name.In author Ray Robinson's skillful hands we come to know Gherig, his nice-guy shyness, devotion to his mother (and later, wife Eleanor), and quiet, classy demeanor.We also get a feel for his upbringing, his days at Columbia University, and more importantly, big league baseball in the 1920-1930's. The author interviewed many ex-teammates like Lefty Gomez, Waite Hoyt, Phil Rizzuto, Bill Dickey, Tommy Henrich, etc., and their words add immensely to the narrative.Robinson notes how Gherig's accomplishments were often overshadowed by Babe Ruth and others, but given Lou's quite persona perhaps it didn't bother him.The author also shows the too-soon decline, as the tragic disease took its toll on this immensely decent, incredibly-strong man, and indirectly his family - his parents had no other surviving children, and his widow never remarried while dedicating her remaining four decades to raising funds for research.

At less than 300 paperback pages, this book may not be as detailed as other Gehrig biographies.Still, it is readable, well-researched, very personal, and highly moving.

Nice Account of Gehrig's Life
A well written piece with good research about the life of this great man. Good book for any sports fan.

Worth a read for any serious baseball fan
This is the story of Lou in more than just baseball terms, from his humble upbringing, to his marriage and untimely death. The book is full of great storiesand insights by someone who has obviously done their homework on the topic. Alot of fact-correcting with regards to the Ruth-Gehrig squabbles, and sets the record straight on aot of issues. It is not a "pageturner", but I came away feeling like I learned a great deal about a baseball legend I thought I knew alot about.

A lively writing style blends history and biography
Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig In His Time charts the life and accomplishments of a truly legendary ball player, plus author Ray Robinson provides the reader with a wealth of background details on the era of baseball through the Depression years. Most of all, it's a recreation of the man who played over two thousand consecutive games before he was diagnosed with the fatal disease named after him. A lively writing style blends history and biography, setting the times and baseball events for newcomers to the sport and providing a vivid account of a legend. Highly recommended: even non-baseball readers will find it engrossing.
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Product Description
From the bestselling author of Ty Cobb comes a definitive biography of Lou Gehrig, "The Iron Horse." Gehrig was voted the MVP Award three times, set the American League record for RBI, and hit 493 home runs--including 23 grand slams, an all-time record. Bak explores the rift between Gehrig and Babe Ruth and examines the more controversial aspects of Gehrig's life. Photos. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Iron Horse
This is not a long biography of Gehrig, which is good if you like quick reading.It brings out the character in the quiet consistant ballplayer who played second fiddle on a great baseball dynasty.It is about how Lou Gehrig lived, how he played, and how he died, with a lot of great pictures as well.His tragic death shocked a nation, and his life was turned into a movie shortly after.This is the story of the greatest first baseman of all time. ... Read more

Product Description
Lou Gehrig was a baseball legend -- the Iron Horse, the stoic New York Yankee who was the greatest first baseman in history, a man whose consecutive-games streak was ended by a horrible disease that now bears his name. But as this definitive new biography makes clear, Gehrig's life was more complicated -- and, perhaps, even more heroic -- than anyone really knew.

Drawing on new interviews and more than two hundred pages of previously unpublished letters to and from Gehrig, Luckiest Man gives us an intimate portrait of the man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing up in New York City, his unlikely friendship with Babe Ruth (a friendship that allegedly ended over rumors that Ruth had had an affair with Gehrig's wife), and his stellar career with the Yankees, where his consecutive-games streak stood for more than half a century. What was not previously known, however, is that symptoms of Gehrig's affliction began appearing in 1938, earlier than is commonly acknowledged. Later, aware that he was dying, Gehrig exhibited a perseverance that was truly inspiring; he lived the last two years of his short life with the same grace and dignity with which he gave his now-famous "luckiest man" speech.

Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Jonathan Eig's Luckiest Man shows us one of the greatest baseball players of all time as we've never seen him before.Amazon.com Review
Lou Gehrig started his professional baseball career at a time when players began to be seen as national celebrities. Though this suited charismatic men such as Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, Gehrig avoided the spotlight and preferred to speak with his bat. Best known for playing in 2,130 consecutive games as well as his courage in battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (a disease that now bears his name), the Iron Horse that emerges from this book is surprisingly naïve and insecure. He would cry in the clubhouse after disappointing performances, was painfully shy around women (much to the amusement of some of his teammates), and particularly devoted to his German-immigrant mother all his life. Even after earning the league MVP award he still feared the Yankees would let him go. Against the advice of Ruth and others, he refused to negotiate aggressively and so earned less than he deserved for many seasons. Honest, humble, and notoriously frugal, his only vices were chewing gum and the occasional cigarette. And despite becoming one of the finest first basemen of all time, Jonathan Eig shows how Gehrig never seemed to conquer his self-doubt, only to manage it better.

Jonathan Eig's Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig offers a fascinating and well-rounded portrait of Gehrig, from his dugout rituals and historic games to his relationships with his mother, wife, coaches, and teammates. His complex friendship with Ruth, who was the polar opposite to Gehrig in nearly every respect, is given particularly vivid attention. Take this revealing description of how the two men began a barnstorming tour together following their 1927 World Series victory: "Ruth tipped the call girls and sent them on their way. Gehrig kissed his mother goodbye." Eig also shares some previously unknown details regarding his consecutive games streak and how he dealt with ALS during the final years of his life. Rich in anecdotes and based on hundreds of interviews and 200 pages of recently discovered letters, the book effectively shows why the Iron Horse remains an American icon to this day. --Shawn Carkonen ... Read more

Customer Reviews (85)

A great book about a great ballplayer
As a Columbia graduate, I liked to stand on the porch of Butler Library and guess where home plate was when the Columbia baseball team played their home games on South Field, of which all that remains is a large lawn split in two by a long sidewalk.Gehrig's legendary home run that broke a window in the Journalism building was a long shot to left-center field.Gehrig remains one of Columbia's two most famous dropouts, the other being Alexander Hamilton (whose studies were interrupted when the College closed for the American Revolution).

Despite his fame, Gehrig is much less known than his famous teammate, Babe Ruth, who was larger than life in so many ways.Unlike Ruth, he came from a solid family and remained close to his parents, who were not so happy about his dropping out of school to play professional baseball.And his wife was not exactly the angelic figure, as she was portrayed in Pride of the Yankees.

Eig brings the whole man to life: his insecurities, the tension between his wife and parents, his feeling overshadowed by Babe Ruth and how his public persona did not crystallize until he was diagnosed with Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis (better known as Lou Gehrig's disease).And you get to see some of what pushed him to play 2,130 consecutive baseball games, despite having broken every finger at least once.And you finally understand how a man who knew he was dying could call himself "the happiest man on the face of the earth."

Excellent!
I found this book to be an excellent history of Lou Gehrig's life.
It was the right mix of stories, statistics and photos. It takes the reader through his childhood, the consecutive games streak and then his untimely death.How ironic that a man known as the "Iron Horse" would be no match against ALS now known as Lou Gehrig's disease.I am not an avid reader but found this book to be a page turner and would recommend it highly.

untitled
This was a gift for my uncle, who they suspect has Lou Gehrig's Disease....and he's not a reader...but has really enjoyed this book...and has related to it, and gotten some comfort from it.To me, that makes this a very wise investment.

Luckiest Man: The life and death of Lou Gehrig
It well written and well documented book on Lou Gehrig.The author has found some up to date information not previously known or publized to make an interesting book.

This author pacts more info into a paragraph than most do in a chapter or more.

I would also highly recommend his newest book on "Al Capone".

Quiet Courage
This is a review of the Lou Gehrig biography, "Luckiest Man,"
written by Jonathan Eig and published by Simon and Schuster in 2005.

For those who do not know, Lou Gehrig was the stalwart, slugging first
baseman of the legendary Babe Ruth-led New York Yankees team that roared
through the 1920s and eventually morphed into the streamlinedJoe DiMaggio-
led Bronx Bombers of the 1930s.

The subtitle of this biography is "The Life And Death Of Lou Gehrig,"
which accurately describes the contents of this book. But that subtitle
does not accurately describe the gracefulness with which this book is
written.

The book does a very good job describing Gehrig's early years, the struggle
to survive and how his German immigrant parents sacrificed much so their
Louie could have the best they could afford.And, unlike many children,
young Lou Gehrig understood and appreciated their efforts which surely inspired him to go to great lengths to achieve what he did although his parents
did not really understand the concept of professinal sports.

But where this book really shnes is the printing of the many letters from Lou Gehrig to his wife discussing the possibilites of the fatal disease
and detailing his fight to beat what eventually he had to accept was
his killer.

Lou Gehrig was an admirable man to the very end and I recommend
this book to anyone as a source of inspiration, a baseball biography,
a treatise on American life a century ago or just a good read.

The film, THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES is still one of the all-time great baseball
movies as well as a darn good biography.And Gary Cooper really does resemble
Lou Gehrig in many ways except his voice. Lou Gehrig had what we would call a New York accent and if you want to see /hear him in actionhe did star in a 1937 B western called RAWHIDE that, while no great shakes as a movie, displays what Lou Gehrig really talked like and even how he carried hmself in real life.

So I have rated Jonathan Eig's "Luckiest Man, " five stars because it echos,
in its prose and its subject, a man who we were lucky to sort of know, even at the great distance of many decades.


... Read more

Product Description
Lou Gehrig has been a symbol of courage and strength to countless fans through the years. His tragic loss to ALS made his retirement from baseball all the more emotional. In this unique biography of the man who has inspired so many, Sara Kaden Brunsvold looks at Gehrig from the point of view of a fan, revealing what he and his legacy have been to her and countless other fans. While all the major events of Gehrig’s life are covered in depth, Kaden is careful to highlight the human stories from his life that fill in the gaps between the facts, such as his cures for hitting slumps, his favorite foods, and even his attempt at comedy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A nice little debut from an obviously knowledgeable fan
"I won't even pretend to be the official Gehrig biographer," Brunsvold warns in the introduction to her book, which is largely written from secondhand sources. However, her passion for her subject is unparalleled. From describing the little nuances of "Rawhide" -- Gehrig's first and only big-screen role -- to the obscure, rarely-known tidbits about Gehrig's life, Brunsvold has assembled an attractive package for any Gehrig fan. Her funky, informal writing style and knack for storytelling makes for an easy and quick read. One can tell she must have had a lot of fun putting this together. ... Read more

Product Description
How did Lou Gehrig become one of baseball's greatest players? What Major League Baseball team did he play for? Why did Lou have to stop playing baseball? Read this book to discover the answers! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Lou Gehrig
Sports Heroes and Legends is a collection of very good biographies. I read about Lou Gehrig. There are tons of different biographies in this series. This series covers Lance Armstrong to Babe Ruth.
Heinrich Ludwig (Lou) Gehrig was very poor as a kid. His parents were German immigrants that lived in a rundown part of New York City. Lou's father was a skilled metal craftsman. His mother was a maid and a cook. Lou could never afford a coat so he always wore a shirt and light pants.
Lou was always ridiculed because of his German accent. He was very athletic. His best sport was baseball. One Christmas his father got him a baseball mitt. He always played baseball after school.
When Lou got into high school he made the football, soccer, and baseball team. Lou went to Chicago with his high school baseball team, to play the Chicago's high school team. They played at Wrigley Field, home of The Cubs. In the game Lou hit a grand slam, at a professional ball park!
When Lou played Rutgers with Columbia a scout was at the game. He watched Lou play and signed him to the New York Yankees. Lou Gehrig went on to be "The Luckiest Man on Earth." He was also one of the best baseball players of all time.
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Product Description
Describes the life of the great baseball player, from his childhood as the only son of German immigrants to his triumph as star of the New York Yankees. ... Read more

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A biography of the New York Yankee first baseman known as "The Iron Man" because he played in over 2000 consecutive games. ... Read more

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A biography of the "Iron Horse", remembered for playing 2,130 consecutive games for the New York Yankees. ... Read more

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Tracing his life from its humble beginnings, the story of an accomplished baseball player who never dared to dream of the Hall of Fame furnishes an eyewitness account of the Negro leagues and a saga of the black experience. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 516 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Signed essays ranging from 500 to 2,500 words, written by subject experts and edited to form a consistent, readable, and straightforward reference. Entries include subject-specific bibliographies and textual cross-references to related essays. ... Read more

Product Description
Lou Gehrig - The Iron Horse is the biography of Lou Gehrig, an American baseball player during the 1920s and 1930s, who set several Major League records and was popularly called the "The Iron Horse" for his durability. His record for most career grand slam home runs (23) still stands today. A native of New York City, he played for the New York Yankees until his career was cut short by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), now commonly referred to in the United States as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Over a 15-season span between 1925 and 1939, he played in 2,130 consecutive games. His popularity with fans endures to this day, as is evidenced by him being one of the leading vote-getters on the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, chosen in 1999. Lou Gehrig - The Iron Horse is highly recommended for those interested in the history and story of one of baseball's greatest players. ... Read more

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The story of Lou Gehrig's Life ... Read more

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Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Notable Sports Figures, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 2945 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Takes a close look at the people in sports who have captured attention because of success on the playing field, or controversy off the playing field. This work features biographies on more than 600 people from around the world and throughout history who have had an impact not only on their sport, but also on the society and culture of their times. It also includes not only the record-breakers that dominated and changed their sport, but also the controversial figures that made headlines even apart from athletic events. ... Read more