I loved this book very much. The first chapter's descriptions of Bonds breaking Mark McGwire's record is nothing less than pure poetry. The writing just rolls off the page, placing me in the chilly night air ("in a town that Mark Twain once said was the coldest Winter he ever spent in the Summer"), to the fabulous descriptions of how sports are the one place where we can lose ourselves and see man's heroism without life and limb being on the line. Who else writes like that? Murray in his prime maybe. This is a book about history, and baseball history second.