Ben Bradlee, Jr.

discusses

The Kid:
The Immortal Life of Ted Williams

Co-sponsored by the Cambridge Public Library

Lecture hall doors will open at 6pm

This event includes a book signing

Date

Apr
7
Monday
April 7, 2014
6:30 PM ET

Location

Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Cambridge Public Library and Harvard Book Store welcome longtime Boston Globe reporter and editor BEN BRADLEE, JR., for a discussion of his book The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams.

Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than 500 home runs has a higher career batting average. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball for nearly five years in the prime of his career to serve as a Marine pilot in WWII and Korea. He hit home runs farther than any player before him--and traveled a long way himself, as Ben Bradlee, Jr.'s grand biography reveals. Born in 1918 in San Diego, Ted would spend most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage. During his 22 years with the Boston Red Sox, Williams electrified crowds across America—and shocked them, too: His notorious clashes with the press and fans threatened his reputation. Yet while he was a God in the batter's box, he was profoundly human once he stepped away from the plate. His ferocity came to define his troubled domestic life. While baseball might have been straightforward for Ted Williams, life was not.

"Bradlee's sumptuous biography details an extraordinary American life while showing us how that life morphed into legend. The Kid reads like an epic, starting before Williams's birth in 1918, outlining his Anglo and Mexican heritage growing up in Southern California, and continuing after his death in 2002 to the present. Bradlee has given us the fullest exploration yet of his monumental ego and the best explanation for his vast inferiority complex....The book is packed with great moments." —Allen Barra, Boston Globe

Ben Bradlee, Jr.
Ben Bradlee, Jr.

Ben Bradlee, Jr.

Ben Bradlee Jr. is the author of the critically acclaimed The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (2013) among other books. Bradlee spent 25 years with The Boston Globe as a reporter and editor. As deputy managing editor, he oversaw the Globe's Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church from July 2001 to August 2002. Bradlee lives with his wife outside Boston.

Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138

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Event Co-Sponsor(s)

Cambridge Public Library: 
https://www.cambridgema.gov/cpl/hoursandlocations/mainlibrary.aspx

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