Joe DiMaggio's complicated, very public, very enigmatic life is also the story of America's media machine. Back in the 1930s, when he first played with the Yankees, DiMaggio was in effect chosen to become our new national hero. How this happened, the invention of national celebrity, and the way fame both builds and destroys is the incredible story told here.
New York Times - Richard Bernstein
Mr. Cramer gets us through his...narrative in brisk and lively fashion, capturing the beat of mid-century America as he proceeds..DiMaggio, in Mr. Cramer's penetrating and unforgiving illumination of him, is a scowling, calculating and sometimes cruel phantom...[Cramer] has written something more than a definitive revisionist biography of a cultural archetype. [He] has furnished us with a grand American tale....
About the Author, Richard Ben Cramer
Richard Ben Cramer won the Pulitzer Prize for Middle East reporting in 1979. His journalism has appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. He is the author of the bestselling Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life and the classic of modern American politics, What It Takes: The Way to the White House. He lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
