About this title: Set at the end of the Great War, "The Given Day" offers an unflinching, utterly spectacular family epic that captures the political unrest of a nation caught between a well-patterned past and an unpredictable future.
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Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Published: 2008-09-23
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: Very Good. Book showing some normal signs of use with light shelf wear to dust jacket (price intact). No markings of any kind. Spine slightly leaning but sound. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover; First Printing
Publisher: William Morrow, New York
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: Good in Good dust jacket. 9780688163181. 1.8 x 9.2 x 6.3 Inches; 704 pages; Book Show Wear; Dust Jacket Rubbed. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Published: 9/23/2008
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: New. 0688163181 New & Unread Book that Have Remainder Mark/ May Have Slight Handling Wear From Bookstore Shelf. IN-STOCK Now For Immediate Secure Packaging & Delivery. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: Good in Good jacket. Ex-Library Has ex-library markings-DJ has chipping, marks, plastic cover-Cover has edgewear, dents-Cocked-Marks on edge-Edgewear-Few marks on pgs-Bumped / dogeared pgs. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Published: 2008-09-23
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: New. FIRST EDITION STATED. Hardback w/ DJ. You are buying a Book in NEW condition with very light shelf wear to include very light edge and corner wear. Buy it Now! ! ! As always, thank you for buying this book from International Book Source, YOUR ONE source FOR ALL your BOOK related NEEDS. Please remember to CHOOSE carefully how QUICKLY you would like to RECEIVE this material FAST, or standard (on next page). Thanks again! ! ! ! read more
Binding: Audio CD
Publisher: HarperAudio
Date Published: 2008-10-01
ISBN-13:9780061661518ISBN:0061661511
Description: Good. Twenty fine excellent-sounding audio CDs in X/LIBRARY snap-shut case. Minimal if any scratching to discs not affecting playback quality. Twenty-four hours of listening narrated by Michael Boatman. A good copy overall. Daily shipping. read more
Description: Fine in Fine dust jacket. Hardcover. William Morrow, 2008. 2nd Printing. Fine Book in Fine Dust Jacket. Price Intact. Overall, a clean and tight copy to add to a collection or read and enjoy. Dust Jacket protected with a new archival cover. Bubble wrapped and shipped promptly in a box. read more
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 9780688163181. Unmarked text, mild shelf wear to edges, secure binding.; Small 4to 9"-11" tall; 704 pages. read more
Edition: First Printing
Binding: Publishers Boards & Cloth
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: Near Fine in Near Fine Plus jacket. Size: 8vo-7¾"-9¾"; 1 present in the number line. A tight, clean and unmarked copy of the book and jacket, though the book has one slightly bumped corner and a little wear to the top of the spine. NF/NF+. Unclipped. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780380731879ISBN:0380731878
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover; First Printing
ISBN-13:9780688163181ISBN:0688163181
Description: Fine in Fine dust jacket. Hardcover. William Morrow, 2008. 1st Edition/1st Printing. Fine Book in Fine Dust Jacket. Price Intact. Overall, a clean and tight copy to add to a collection or read and enjoy. Dust Jacket protected with a new archival cover. Bubble wrapped and shipped promptly in a box. read more
"I'm a big fan of Lehane, and enjoyed his previous books greatly - and the brief quotes on the book front and back cover touted this novel as being far and away his best, putting him squarely in the big leagues. Imagine my (continuing) disappointment when, as I got further along in the book, it devolved into just another character-family based soap opera of an "historical novel". While Lehane was crafty enough to choose an era with more social, political, and ethnic upheaval than most, the characters are so predictably archetypal that I was pretty good at guessing the next actions - and dialogue - of all of the major characters, of which there are too many. I am disappointed in this latest work of Lehane's. He is still a very good teller of tales, but the tales have become increasingly shallow, chock-full of knee-jerk moralizing and a criminal dumbing-down of some of the more important historical events that this country, and especially Boston, have endured...and endured is what I felt like I had done when I (forced myself to)finished the book. I hope Lehane made lots of money on ths, so he won't have to pla the whore again too soon."
"As always with Dennis Lehane, this is compelling story telling, a page turner. His characters are clearly etched from the get-go, and the story (actually, two stories that merge and then ultimately separate again) unfolds easily.
This is a historical novel--revolving around the Boston Police Strike of 1919, but it also encompasses the great influenza epidemic, the role of the Irish in Boston, race relations, the origins of the FBI, the infamous Palmer Raids, political unrest in America following World War I and Babe Ruth.
We have all read at least something about the history of labor unions in America and the struggle for workers to win the right to organize. However, having grown up in an era when organized labor was highly respectable and the right to strike respected, it is really difficult for me to understand how controversial these issues were in an earlier era. Lehane manages to convey the sensibility of that era, when most Americans equated unions and workers organizing with Communists and anarchists. This does what historical novels are supposed to do--make you "get" the era both psychologically and emotionally.
My only criticism is that, from time to time, I thought that expressions used by his characters and attitudes expressed were possibly anachronistic. Something like that can shake the reader's confidence in the historical accuracy of the book."
"I'm not generally one to pick up sprawling, massive historical sagas, but the period and locale covered by this one was just too interesting for me to ignore. Post-World War I America was a place of massive social and economic turmoil, and Lehane ambitiously sets out to capture as much of this change as possible though his Boston lens. To do so, he invokes two protagonists: Irish-American Boston Police Department officer Danny Coughlin and an African-American named Luther Laurence, who, throughout the course of the book travels from Ohio to Tulsa to Boston. And oh yes, Babe Ruth pops in and out of the narrative at times as a kind of naive Forrest Gumpian voice.
Through Danny's eyes, we see the political and class turmoil that was going on in many of the country's big cities at the time. He starts the book as a well-regarded, but somewhat naive, police officer destined for big things, as befits the eldest son of a politically canny police captain. Over the course of the story, he gets exposed to more and more examples of injustice and gets involved in the police union. This allows Lehane to examine the labor struggles of the day, as well as xenophobic reactions to immigration, fears of internal political terrorism, and government overreactions to all of this -- culminating (and I'm not giving anything away here) in the Boston Police Strike. It's hard not read the message between the lines about post-9/11 American society, and sometimes Lehane is none to subtle in spelling out the parallels.
Meanwhile, Luther gives us the postwar black experience. We meet him initially as a man whose baseball skill equals that of big leaguers but will never get to play professionally due to his race. He loses his factory job when white men come back from the war, but finds some measure of a free society when he relocates to an all-black area of Tulsa with his pregnant girlfriend. There, in Greenwood, he revels in a world where black men can own cars and live vibrant lives, but soon enough he gets swept up in the low life and is forced to hide out in Boston. Once in Boston, he finds work both with the NAACP and with Danny's father, and forms a friendship along the way with Danny. Unfortunately, his past misdeeds start to catch up with him and he has to struggle to avoid their consequences. (If you know your history, you'll know that two years later, Tulsa's black oasis was destroyed by the worst race riot in American history, resulting in the murder of several hundred to several thousand people.)
The book is at its best in conveying specific scenes and spaces: the drab tenement apartments, the smoke-filled back rooms where the powerful ward bosses make plans after huge Sunday meals, the rowdy and raucous nightclubs of Tulsa, the dark and mysterious small bars where plots are hatched and socialism debated, the shabby police stations infested by vermin, and so forth. Lehane does a great job of getting the sights and smells of the time down on the paper, as well as the zeitgeist. Where the book is somewhat less successful is the individual characters and their relationships. Danny's relationships in particular -- with various women, and his two brothers and father is rife with cliche and melodrama. Luther is handled somewhat better, but even his arc of transformation and redemption seems rather forced at times, and his friendship with Danny is way too shmaltzy.
When a book is this long, it really has to bring the goods for me to recommend it, since the time you take to read it is time you could fill with two other books instead. Unfortunately, it's just not quite good enough -- there are plenty of good set pieces, such as the impromptu baseball game between big leaguers and an amateur black team that opens the book, and the rioting in Boston that forms the climax -- but these aren't enough to redeem the clunky characters and Lehane's heavy-handed injection of message throughout. But if you like big historical fiction, or are particularly interested in Boston or labor movements in America, it's probably worth checking out. In a sense, it's probably a best read in combination with some other fiction about the era like E.L. Doctrow's Ragtime, or of the era, like John Dos Passos' USA trilogy (all of which have their own flaws)."
"You've done it now, Dennis Lehane. Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention had seen that with "Mystic River" and "Shutter Island" you had grown beyond being "merely" an excellent writer of new noir crime fiction, a reputation earned with your five highly praised, often brutal Kenzie-Gennaro novels. And with the Martin Scorsese-directed "Shutter Island" waiting on the shelf as the third movie based on your fiction, you clearly already were a big deal. But "The Given Day" blows the lid off. You are simply a great American writer.
Lehane sticks to Boston again for "The Given Day" but stretches the geographical boundaries, briefly, to Oklahoma and Ohio while flexing his prose muscles in impressive ways. Lehane throws a lot into this stew, stirring it all into a tasty representation of a chaotic America in 1918-19. "The Given Day" manages to be small and personal even while depicting the swirl of history. A novel whose prologue features the Red Sox's Babe Ruth stepping off a train from Ohio bound for Game 4 of the 1918 World Series and asking to play with a group of black ballplayers in a pickup game also encompasses the 1919 flu pandemic; the Boston police strike (the main focus); racial turmoil; familial tension; politics and historical figures; crime; anarchists, revolutionaries and "Bolsheviks" (many nonviolent, though tell that to the police). In case we needed reminding, the present is not the most dangerous time for terrorism in American history.
I found "The Given Day" in the mystery section at my bookstore, where it probably resides in yours. This is understandable, but inappropriate. Lehane has busted far beyond the bonds of genre fiction and delivered his best book. And that makes it a wonder."
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