by Nicholas Dawidoff, 1995, 2011, Vintage Reprint Edition

I really did not like this book! It was selected for our book club and the verdict was that it wasn’t written very well, but that they “all” liked the story. I took exception to that as I did not like the story so “all” was not a valid description.

Moe Berg was a fascinating individual who grew up in Newerk, New Jersey, the son of immigrant Jews. He had a remarkable ability to learn and speak multiple languages and had a prodigeous memory. He went to Princeton, played baseball there, and, after graduating, played professional baseball. He managed to combine his baseball career with graduate school at Columbia. During Word War II he worked for the OSS and investigated the German project to develop an atomic bomb.

The author of the book interviewed many individuals who had some contact with Berg during his lifetime. The problem with the book is that it is largely a collection of anecdotes about Berg, many of which were repetitive. I found myself skimming over these pages as many of them didn’t seem to add anything additional about Berg.

The last chapter in the book began to provide some insight into the reasons that Berg was the way he was. His father looked down on Berg’s accomplishements and never offered any praise or encouragement. No matter what Berg did, it wasn’t enough in the eyes of his father.

If the book had focused more on the psychological aspects of Berg’s character and had related the many anecdotes to illustrate the effects, it would have been a much more interesting book. Collecting a bunch of anecdotes about an individual without any context, doesn’t seem like a winning recipe.