September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series

Google executive and former Yahoo sportswriter Desjardin attempts to link WWI, the Spanish flu epidemic, and the 1918 World Series in this unconvincing historical account. The city of Boston is portrayed as an important common thread, but using the city as a linking factor doesn’t shed any new light on this time of well-documented upheaval. The descriptions of the war and the flu and their effects are well-researched, but the calamities consumed other parts of the United States just as much as they did Boston. And, while Desjardin writes vividly about baseball, the role of rising star Babe Ruth, and tussles between players and owners over money, these events seem trivial in this context. The World Series has the barest connection to the war or the epidemic, and is significant retrospectively only because the Boston Red Sox didn’t win the Series again for 86 years. The author muddies the waters further by discussing the women’s suffrage movement and Woodrow Wilson’s failed efforts to bring the United States into the League of Nations. This book contains a lot of noteworthy facts, but readers seeking to learn something new about the three subjects listed in the title should look elsewhere. (Aug.)