Dazzling...A celebration of a vanished heroic age and a simpler America --New York Times Book Review David Halberstam s classic chronicle of baseball s most magnificent season as seen through the battle royal between Joe DiMaggio s Yankees and Ted Williams s Red Sox for the hearts of a nation. The year was 1949 and a war-wearied nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball s American League and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions--one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season. With incredible skill passion and insight Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam returns us to that miraculous summer--and to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat.