Joe DiMaggio : The Hero's Life

I decided to get this book because I read a great biography on Ted Williams last year. This was a fairly long book (508 pages) and does a good job covering his career , determining why he was “America's Hero” for 2 generations and revealing a deeply flawed character. Example :Joe speaking to young woman who came up to him at an airport , she told him she worked for the company that was marketing his memorabilia“F*** You, that was just Joe's opener. F*ing C***. What gives you the right to come up to me? Get the F*** away from me , You're too ugly to talk to me in public.”From my reading of this book I would say there is no way that #5 can be said to have had a “life well lived”. He was aloof, disconnected from his family, stingy, cheap, petty and seemed to have been quite stuck on himself. He seemed to only view people as objects to be used, whether that be women as sex objects or men friends who would drive him around, pay him to show up at nightclubs, market his signature. He physically abused Marilyn Monroe, pushed his son out of his life and treated a lot of people really poorly.He formed no real connections with his teammates. I remember being struck how in 1951 he didn't speak to Mickey Mantle the entire year until Mickey hurt himself in the world series tripping over a sprinkler “ Stay still, they're bringing a stretcher” was the only thing he said to him all year.The book does a great job covering Joe's career with the Yankees- 13 seasons, 10 world series, 3 MVPs. It then spends about 200 pages covering his post career life. So if you don't mind having another hero revealed as a douchebag, I'd recommend this book.

Became a bit repetitive at times with the author never willing to lose hold on his underlying thesis of Joe as a reluctant hero unless there was a dollar to be made. Left feeling little sympathy or empathy for anyone in the story.

This is an excellent biography overall. I got the feeling it was extremely well researched and well written, and I learned a lot about Joe DiMaggio, "the greatest ballplayer who ever lived," as he liked to be called.But the picture painted by Richard Ben Cramer is not pretty to look at. Joltin' Joe was, it appears, a money-grubbing skinflint who expected people to give him everything for free and immediately became suspicious and cut people off as soon as they asked for the smallest thing in return. He cut off his son, who later died of a crank overdose, for not living up to his standards. He lost two wives, including Marilyn Monroe, essentially because he was so controlling and domineering. Although he managed to patch things up with one of his brothers, Dom, he basically died alone under the effective control of a lawyer who was out to get everything he could from the DiMaggio estate.I didn't doubt this picture as presented by the author, but I felt there must be something missing. Late in his life, he was a very popular social fixture on the New York scene, hanging out with a lot of luminaries such as Woody Allen, Paul Simon and Henry Kissinger, to name a few. I found it hard to reconcile Cramer's picture of DiMaggio as, well, a jerk, with the apparent fact that he was a popular social butterfly late in life.It seemed to me that he must have had a charming side too, or he wouldn't have been so popular. But there was little suggestion in the book that Joe could be charming. That's why I gave this book four stars instead of five -- that feeling that something must be missing. Still, it's a great book and a great read. Highly recommended for baseball fans.

Richard Ben Cramer always went the opposite direction of convention wisdom. In WHAT IT TAKES, he saw the positive in the men who ran for president in 1988. In JOE DIMAGGIO:THE HERO'S LIFE, he saw the negative in the man who made it his life work - and the work of others - to cultivate a positive image. The result is a good, but not classic book like WHAT IT TAKES. DiMaggio comes off horribly - in fact, there is not one moment in his life that Cramer presents him as likable.The book itself suffers from a great unevenness. The first half up to DiMaggio's retirement from baseball has a flow to it. The second half is very choppy, and somewhat poorly edited.

As a Englihman just back from holiday in San Francisco, I was really taken with the game of baseball,so on my return I went looking for a book to read.I was so lucky to stumble across this book on Joe Dimaggio, even people in England have heard of Joe, I have to say this is one of the best books I have read in sometime.I read some reviews saying the book was a hatchet job nothing could be further from the truth, I loved every page of the book. The author does not try just to be nasty for the sake of it,the book comes across as a honest portray of a man trying to be normal but also dealing with the fame and money most people only dream of.To be making $100.000 a year in the 1950's and then to marry the most famous women in the world, and to have to win every game on your own brings its own pressures'.This book was that good I have ordered 2 more on the subject of baseball, one on the great Willie Mays and the other on The Giants if they come any were near as good as this book I will be a happy man.Just to finsh any one looking as I was to get an first time insight in to the game of baseball do yourself a favour and start with this book.

Very good biography. A must for any baseball fan wanting to know more about one of the most famous players of all time.

the insight into Di Maggio's life is absorbing ,surprisea supposedly perfect hero,

GOOD BOOK.

One of the best biographies I have ever read in any genre. Ben Cramer nails it. Loved the passages about the Yankees in the late 1930s. It's a stirring account of the Yankee Clipper, warts and all. After reading the DiMaggio book, I went on to What It Takes, Ben Cramer's door-stopper about the 1988 presidential election. It's excellent in parts but ultimately too long and dense. His best book for my money is The Hero's Life. A shame that Ben Cramer died too young.