Last Days of Summer, Steve Kluger
Last Days of Summer, Steve Kluger
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Last Days of Summer

Author: Steve Kluger

Narrator: Mike Chamberlain

Unabridged: 7 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/30/2019


Synopsis

A contemporary American classic—a poignant and hilarious tale of baseball, hero worship, eccentric behavior, and unlikely friendship

Last Days of Summer is the story of Joey Margolis, neighborhood punching bag, growing up goofy and mostly fatherless in Brooklyn in the early 1940s. A boy looking for a hero, Joey decides to latch on to Charlie Banks, the all-star third basemen for the New York Giants. But Joey's chosen champion doesn't exactly welcome the extreme attention of a persistent young fan with an overactive imagination. Then again, this strange, needy kid might be exactly what Banks needs.

About Steve Kluger

Steve Kluger shook hands with Lucille Ball when he was twelve. He's since lived a few more decades, but nothing much registered after that.

He is a novelist and playwright who grew up during the Sixties with only two heroes: Tom Seaver and
Ethel Merman. Few were able to grasp the concept. A veteran of Casablanca and a graduate of The Graduate, he has written extensively on subjects as far-ranging as World War II, rock and roll, and the Titanic, and as close to the heart as baseball and the Boston Red Sox (which frequently have nothing to do with one another). Doubtless due to the fact that he's a card-carrying Baby Boomer whose entire existence was shaped by the lyrics to Abbey Road, Workingman's Dead, and Annie Get Your Gun (his first spoken words, in fact, were actually stolen from The Pajama Game), he's also forged a somewhat singular path as a civil rights advocate, campaigning for a "Save Fenway Park" initiative (which qualifies as a civil right if you're a Red Sox fan), counseling gay teenagers, and-on behalf of Japanese American internment redress-lobbying the Department of the Interior to restore the baseball diamond at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Meanwhile, he's donated half of his spare time to organizations such as Lambda Legal, GLSEN, and Models of Pride, and gives the rest of it to his nephews and nieces: Emily, Noah, Bridgette, Audrey, Elisa, Paloma Logan, Evan, and Robbie-the nine kids who own his heart.

He lives in Boston, Massachusetts-the only city in the world.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack... ♫ OK, so it’s not health food. But what we consume doesn’t always have to be good for us. This book was full of empty calories, processed to a point where pretty much every bit of literary goodness was gone. And I ate every bite. A Jewish kid with an absent fat......more

This book is amazing. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. I laughed out LOUD, really, I had to pay attention who were near me while reading it. And at 94% I just HAD to STOP to read. I was at work, and I knew there were no way I can go through the last 6 % reading it in public. The first thing I did when I came home today......more

Goodreads review by April

Frankly, I was skeptical when I picked this up but went in with high hopes given positive reviews. At a glance through the pages, I wasn't sure I wanted to jump in. I felt like a series of letters and news clippings was going to take away from a cohesive narrative, and I wasn't sure about a story of......more

Goodreads review by Peggy

Epistolary novels are hard to pull off. By ditching conventional plot structure, the writer focuses all the attention on his characters. If the writer doesn't get the voices just right, readers lose interest in the story being told. Luckily, Kluger is dead solid perfect in The Last Days of Summer. Wh......more