This book is full of interesting factoids that make it worth a read, but the overall quality suffers badly from a lack of structure and cohesive theme.

It’s hard to find a unifying topic amongst the barrage of information Krell shares in this book, unless it’s just “here are some things that happened in 1962,” which doesn’t cut it as a book theme if the pieces can’t be tied together in a more meaningful way.

There is baseball (though not enough of it to justify the subtitle), there are politics, and there is a LOT of talk about the television industry. Had all of these things been brought together thematically in some way, this could have been great, but instead it’s just a heap of information that never coheres.

You’ll certainly learn some fun facts from this one and I imagine it might be an enjoyable nostalgia trip for anyone who was alive at the time, but it’s a bit off the mark to call it a true baseball book and the lack of structural integrity and unifying theme hurt the overall quality significantly.

This book brought back memories for me. 1962 was the year that I initially became more than passably interested in baseball, and I memorized the lineups of both world Series teams (S.F. Giants and the N.Y. Yankees). I cheered for the Giants because I lived in the community where Chuck Hiller grew up (who hit a grand slam in the second game) and for a short period of time after the series, he and his family lived a half block away from me. John F. Kennedy was the first president I remember being aware of, and John Glenn was a household name.

Author David Krell does not stop with the obvious people, however. He has delved deep into the space race, politics, and baseball to offer us a book steeped in the knowledge of these niches. Mr. Krell provides what seems to be an endless supply of stories and anecdotes, slices of life of those who were living and providing a backdrop to what the rest of us were doing. As a child, they were bigger than life. As an adult, some of the magic wears off, yet it is still interesting to learn about the lives of those I only could see in the papers or through television.

“1962” provides all that and more. Most of the baseball lore centers around the teams in the World Series, teams that had moved cities and those teams that found their way into a growing league (Houston Colt 45s and the New York Mets). Political stories are not limited to JFK, they extend into others working in the government. There were also stories about the space race I had not heard before. These three areas provide plenty of opportunities for the author to find interesting tidbits and fill up an entire book.

Some of the stories/anecdotes last for a few pages while others only take up a few paragraphs. This would make it easy to set the book down and return later, not worried about trying to figure out where in the story you left off. Well researched, and enjoyable not only for those who witnessed some of the action firsthand, but also for those who wish to take a look back at how some of the world was before larger events in the 1960s took over. Five stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and the University of Nebraska Press for a complimentary electronic copy of this book.

This is a book with a really promising idea, which unfortunately is somewhat confusingly organized, making for a disjointed reading experience.

For this book, the Pros all center on the amount of research that went into it. David Krell has clearly done his homework, and there are some great nuggets of writing about events in America in 1962. He does a great job providing in depth storytelling around the creation of the two baseball expansion teams of 1962 (the Mets and the Houston Colt-45s), especially the Houston team. And you get some in depth biographies of individual baseball players, as well as good commentary on other important figures and events in 1962 America.

The Cons all center on how the author organized the material. Each of the book's 12 chapters has two heading - the calendar month January through December, and then a thematic or topical chapter name that relates to the bulk of what's covered in the chapter. To be honest with you, I completely glossed over the month chapter titles until I got to July, since the book is NOT really chronologically organized. The October through December chapters are more centered on events that occurred during those months than any of the earlier chapters, which will have events from the month at the beginning or end of the chapter - in some cases only a couple of paragraphs - before the topical thrust of the chapter sets in.

The title of the book would lead you to believe that you'll be reading about the 1962 baseball season. I so wish the author had structured the book that way, so that the biographies of the players would come naturally out of the stories of their play during the season. As it is, they are arranged within rosters of each of the teams he covers, and so feel very disjointed. Likewise, the topics of each chapter, though some of them really interesting, don't build on each other.

If you are a baseball fan, and you are interested in events in the early 1960s, this book has a wealth of information and, if you can get past the issues with the organization of the material, may be worth your time.

For both baseball and America, 1962 was an exciting year. In baseball, the National League pennant came down to a best of three playoff between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants. The league expanded to 10 teams, adding the Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets. While the New York Yankees won in the American League yet again, two surprising teams there included the Minnesota Twins and California Angels. Both of those teams not only surpassed expectations but also had a pitcher throw a no hitter.

As for America, between the changes in entertainment such as television shows and movies, the excitement generated by the young and attractive President and First Lady and the pride the entire country had with the space program, that was producing an optimistic feeling around the nation. Both of these subjects are blended together in this book by David Krell.

The book would be described better by switching around the words "baseball" and "America" in the title as there is much more information on American events in television, movies, politics, society and space than there is about baseball. In the introduction, Krell states that he will only write about five teams – the two new National League franchises plus the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees. The other two mentioned in this review, the Angels and Twins, only had brief mentions because of the no hitters and also because Angels pitcher Bo Belinsky made more headlines on the society pages than on the sports pages because of his marriage to Mamie Van Doren.

Then, when one reads about those five teams, this is mostly a short description of the teams on the field. Instead, the dialogue is most short biographies about the more important players on those teams. These are all brief, whether the player was a star at the time or a bench jockey – if there was something interesting to share, Krell did so. A reader looking for writing about the actual play on the field will find the most about that in the chapter on the World Series, and even then there are some games that are covered thoroughly and some get just scant text.

However, if the reader is looking for material on the other topics, then this book is a treasure trove of information. I found the most interesting parts on these topics were anything on the space program and the writing on the Belinsky-Van Doren marriage. These and other topics, especially those about President Kennedy or the First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her televised "tour" of the White House were the better parts of the book. Because these were very good, I did decide to finish the book even though I was hoping to read more about baseball. With a two star rating for the baseball writing and the four star rating for the writing on other topics, I give this one an overall rating of three stars and while I would not recommend it for baseball readers, I do believe that readers interested in other topics that were newsworthy in 1962 would find this book enjoyable.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This was an odd one for me. I'm a big baseball fan and I love JFK so I was looking forward to this one based on the cover and description. However, I don't think this book was all that much about baseball or JFK, and was really mostly just about 1962. I guess if you take the full title just at face value it makes sense because it was about 1962 and specifically America during JFK's presidency, with some baseball mixed in. I just didn't feel that was what the book was billed as. If you are looking for a book that recaps 1962 from many different historical and pop culture angles, and pays extra attention to the 1962 baseball at times, then this book might be for you. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed with it perhaps due to misguided expectations.

I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately the layout of it was a hot mess. Over the years, the University of Nebraska Press has become well-known for publishing a variety of baseball centric books. I have always had a pretty positive experience until I came across 1962. The premise of the novel is great. 1962 was a very memorable year. You had the Cuban Missile Crisis, Marilyn Monroe‘s death, and a World Series that went to seven games that featured the first East Coast versus West Coast rivalry. Unfortunately, I did not follow how Mr. Krell put this book together.

I think if Mr. Krell would have named this book something else, it would’ve been much more appropriate. By naming it 1962 and making each chapter a month, you would expect the book to follow chronological order throughout the year. This was not the case. Let me site some of the examples......

- Mr. Krell spends a lot of time talking about Lost in Space, which did not premiere until 1965.
- The month of March covers the Houston Astros and nothing else. In fact Mr. Krell spends a good amount of time talking about Rusty Staub, who did not debut for the Astros until 1963.
- In a chapter detailing the Anaheim Angels, Mr. Krell goes off on a tangent describing Bo Belinski’s life after throwing a no hitter in 1962. He spends an insane amount of time talking about the owner of a car dealership that Mr. Belinski worked for in the 1990’s.

These are just a few examples of the confusion within this book. The formula seemed to be to cover a specific team and talk about each player or manager on that team. Mr. Krell instead of concentrating on the year itself, he tended to give you the full story of that particular player or manager’s career. While there were some references to baseball events and games in 1962, he mainly glossed over them. For example he talks about the Los Angeles Dodgers versus the San Francisco Giants in a three-game playoff to determine who makes the 1962 World Series. Mr. Krell gives very little detail on the games themselves. In fact this series went down to a decisive game three. This is all he had to say about the third game...

“The Dodgers were an inning from going to the World Series. They led 4-2 on their home turf with one out in the bottom of the 9th. Then the Giants piled on hits and runs to quash Dodgers hopes....”

Mr. Krell actually went game by game for the World Series, but an exciting back and forth seven game series was summarized on about 11 Kindle pages. I’ve read books that have spent more time on a single game. Mr. Krell also tended to throw in a random paragraph about a specific episode from a TV show from the era that didn’t do much to move the story along. He also self admittedly only focused on about five teams for the year. Unfortunately, this book gives an incomplete picture of the baseball season.

Overall I was thoroughly disappointed in this book. It read more like a disjointed term paper than an must read story about 1962 centered on baseball. I recommend you look at a number of the other fine works that the University of Nebraska Press has put out centered on Baseball. They have a good track record overall. This was just a miss in my opinion.

The write up for this book is bit misleading. It implies that there will be more baseball in the book than there is. In addition, the the baseball is more of a mishmash and broad overview of some of the players and teams. If felt like there was more on the events of the day/year than devoted to baseball. While a somewhat interesting read, it is definitely not a book for anyone looking for an in depth look at baseball in 1962.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.