Immortalized in song and story, Joe DiMaggio is one of baseball's most accomplished players―and also one of its most enigmatic stars. DiMaggio's life is often seen as embodying the American Dream. The son of Sicilian immigrants, he rose from an unexceptional childhood in San Francisco to stardom on the national pastime's greatest stage―Yankee Stadium. As a player, DiMaggio fought off injuries and earned a reputation for unyielding excellence, exemplified by his Major-League-record 56-game hitting streak. DiMaggio's celebrity and sense of style and grace transcended the game, and his brief marriage to America's sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, remains the stuff of legends. But Joltin' Joe struggled with the attention and scrutiny that came with fame, and he became increasingly reclusive in later life. In this concise biography, David Jones offers a complex new look at the man who was once voted baseball's greatest living player. It has been said that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing in professional sports. Baseball's All-Time Greatest Hitters presents biographies on Greenwood's selection for the 12 best hitters in Major League history, written by some of today's best baseball authors. These books present straightforward stories in accessible language for the high school researcher and the general reader alike. Each volume includes a timeline, bibliography, and index. In addition, each volume includes a Making of a Legend chapter that analyses the evolution of the player's fame and (in some cases) infamy. Grade 9 Up–A complex view of an American baseball legend. Twelve chapters, each headed by a quote to set the tone, chronologically discuss DiMaggio's professional career and personal life from his roots as a son of Sicilian immigrants and one of nine children to his death in 1999. Jones describes the highs and lows of the "Yankee Clipper's" life and the people who influenced him in positive and negative ways. Opinion is supported with careful documentation as Jones is kinder to DiMaggio than Richard Ben Cramer is in his biography, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (S & S, 2000). Each chapter includes source notes. Nine black-and-white photographs are interspersed into this story of a man who did not know how to handle either his fame or fortune at a time when baseball needed a hero. Injuries plagued his career, but DiMaggio's record of 56 consecutive hits still stands today, making this athlete a legend in spite of some of his personal decisions. Supportive documentation presented in an honest manner gives readers a fair representation of the subject. Both the sometimes-sensitive content and vocabulary suggest a fairly sophisticated readership. –Janice C. Hayes, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ?[T]he perfect length for those "read a biography of these many pages" projects that teachers perennially assign. It would also serve any researcher well as a starting point for a project....Librarians should consider purchasing titles in this series to beef up their biography collections in anticipation of those annual assignments.?-VOYA ?A complex view of an American baseball legend. Twelve chapters, each headed by a quote to set the tone, chronologically discuss DiMaggio's professional career and personal life from his roots as a son of Sicilian immigrants and one of nine children to his death in 1999. Jones describes the highs and lows of the "Yankee Clipper's" life and the people who influenced him in positive and negative ways....Supportive documentation presented in an honest manner gives readers a fair representation of the subject.?-School Library Journal "ÝT¨he perfect length for those "read a biography of these many pages" projects that teachers perennially assign. It would also serve any researcher well as a starting point for a project....Librarians should consider purchasing titles in this series to beef up their biography collections in anticipation of those annual assignments."-VOYA "[T]he perfect length for those "read a biography of these many pages" projects that teachers perennially assign. It would also serve any researcher well as a starting point for a project....Librarians should consider purchasing titles in this series to beef up their biography collections in anticipation of those annual assignments."-VOYA "A complex view of an American baseball legend. Twelve chapters, each headed by a quote to set the tone, chronologically discuss DiMaggio's professional career and personal life from his roots as a son of Sicilian immigrants and one of nine children to his death in 1999. Jones describes the highs and lows of the "Yankee Clipper's" life and the people who influenced him in positive and negative ways....Supportive documentation presented in an honest manner gives readers a fair representation of the subject."-School Library Journal David Jones is Professor of Philosophy at Ke