Goldberger has an easy way with his descriptions, and his analyses of various ballparks are done with clarity and wit. “Both a beautifully illustrated history of North American baseball stadiums and a defense of the simple but enduring idea of a ballpark that fits neatly into the hum and hive of a grid of city streets. Lushly illustrated.” -John Swansburg, The New York Times Book Review Flip to the sections on your favorite parks and you’ll find surprising tidbits on nearly every page, the book also mounts a sustained argument across its pages, which makes reading it end to end equally rewarding. “Offers a concise history of major-league ballparks, from the earliest wooden structures to the present.

Qualities which are enhanced, or diminished, by ballpark design.' -Bob Costas

He also brings a thoughtful fan’s appreciation of baseball’s unique appeal and romance. 'As a Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic, Paul Goldberger brings scholarship and a discerning eye to these pages. This book by Paul Goldberger gives incredible new insights into the cathedrals at which we love to worship it. “I read this entire book! Baseball inspires a religious devotion for me and its many followers. And how the site details and the requirements of the game-the diamond, the outfields, the walls, the grandstands-shaped our most beloved ballparks.Ī fascinating, exuberant ode to the Edens at the heart of our cities-where dreams are as limitless as the outfields. Throughout, Goldberger shows us the way in which baseball's history is concurrent with our cultural history: the rise of urban parks and public transportation the development of new building materials and engineering and design skills. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks, Goldberger reveals the manifestations of a changing society: the earliest ballparks evoked the Victorian age in their accommodations-bleachers for the riffraff, grandstands for the middle-class the 'concrete donuts' of the 1950s and '60s made plain television's grip on the public's attention and more recent ballparks, like Baltimore's Camden Yards, signal a new way forward for stadium design and for baseball's role in urban development. An exhilarating, splendidly illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball: told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic.įrom the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a 'saloon in the open air'), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America's favorite pastime.

Paul goldberger baseball