Books On Film | 42 (Jackie Robinson)

The biopic 42 hit movie theaters yesterday. The film is about the life of famous baseball player Jackie Robinson, who was the first black player in major league baseball since 1884 and whose recruitment helped end 60 years of segregation in baseball.

The film focuses on Robinson's recruitment by the Brooklyn Dodger's team executive Branch Rickey in 1946, follows him during his successive rookie year on the team, and culminates in the 1947 World Series (the first to be televised) where the Dodgers faced the Yankees.

The movie already has a tie-in novelization book, but I thought a better book to read would be Jackie Robinson's autobiography I Never Had It Made. In the book Robinson chronicles his early life, his college years at UCLA, his time in the army during WWII, and his years as a baseball player for the Negro American Leagues and Major League Baseball.

If you have an interest in baseball or American History then check out the film and the book!

Cover courtesy of LibraryThing

Book Bucket List | A Long Way Gone

Ishmael Beah's biography A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is one of my favorite books.  I first heard of this book when the author was being interviewed about it on NPR.  The author was only twenty four years old at the time and answering questions about when, over a decade previous, he was a soldier in Sierra Leone.  When he was only thirteen years old, Beah was taken from his family during Sierra Leone's civil war, and forced to be a soldier for the Sieera Leonnean government army.  I ran out and got Beah's biography, A Long Way Gone, after hearing his interview.

Beah's biography not only gives a through history of Sierra Leone, but reveals the horrors he had to live through during his three years as a child soldier.  He also goes into detail about his rescue by UNICEF and his eventual move to the United States.  After completing high school in America, Beah enrolled at Oberlin College and graduated with a degree in Political Science.

So if you're looking for a biography that you won't want to put down, check out Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone for a truly inspirational story.