"In James T. Farrell and Baseball: Dreams and Realism on Chicago’s South Side, sociologist Charles DeMotte paints a rich, eloquent, and colorful portrait of the author’s life, the world he grew up in, and how they pertain to his writings on America’s Pastime. DeMotte has done his work well. Besides combing Farrell’s work, the author’s extensive sources range widely from the Dorothy and Harold Seymour papers, to the James T. Farrell papers at the University of Pennsylvania, to the Chicago History Museum and the Newberry Library."—Bob Komoroski, Inside Game
“Charles DeMotte captures the colorful and vibrant world of James T. Farrell’s boyhood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago—a teeming environment populated by youth of every race and ethnicity who dreamed the American dream and intermingled on the city’s baseball fields. DeMotte shows how Farrell’s affection for the game and his observation of the various subcultures in this milieu contributed to his life’s work. The book is an engaging and thoroughly enlightening biography and work of social history.”—Thomas Wolf, coauthor of Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland
“Admirers of James T. Farrell who love baseball as he did will welcome this Farrell-tinted study of the evolution of organized baseball on Chicago’s South Side in the early twentieth century, the place and time that the novelist made his own in Studs Lonigan and other works. Baseball fans new to Farrell will appreciate his kindred spirit and Mr. DeMotte’s account of the sport’s growth in the era of Ty Cobb and the Black Sox scandal, a time when young Farrell, too, was growing up.”—Robert K. Landers, author of An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell
