Chasing Dreams: Baseball and Becoming American

Nothing matches the energy of Opening Day: a celebration of springtime, of renewed dreams, and of national heroes past, present, and future. From the game’s earliest days in the nineteenth century through today, baseball has served as a pathway for minority groups to learn and understand American values.

As a complement to the groundbreaking 2014 exhibition Chasing Dreams: Baseball and Becoming American, the National Museum of American Jewish History has published this 256-page hardbound volume featuring over 40 evocative, compelling, and touching essays by a notable array of authors, sportswriters, former players, and commentators, as well as 143 stunning photographs chronicling the history of the game. 

The stories that fill this volume illustrate baseball’s centrality in American culture, from the major leagues to the little leagues, and how parents, children, and grandchildren adapted to, and sometimes challenged, what it means to be an American.

 

Edited by Josh Perelman, with contributions from:

Michael Scott Alexander
Rebecca T. Alpert
Marty Appel
Marc Appleman
Brad Ausmus
Abraham Cahan
Billy Crystal
Michael Berenbaum
Ira Berkow
Barry M. Bloom
Adrian Burgos Jr.
Adam Chandler
William Choslovsky
Colin Friedman
Doug Glanville
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Eric Rolfe Greenberg
Jeffrey S. Gurock
Aviva Kempner
Jane Leavy
Peter Levine
Bernard Malamud
Colum McCann
Pamela S. Nadell
Kerry Yo Nakagawa
Daniel Okrent
Chaim Potok
Shirley Povich
Joshua Prager
William Ressler
Steven A. Riess
Philip Roth
Rob Ruck
Justine Siegal
Scott Simon
Curt Smith
Arn Tellem
John Thorn
Marc Tracy
Beth S. Wenger
Stephen Wong
Steve Wulf