Book Review- A Nice Little Place on the North Side

I really wanted to like this book. I did. Subtitled "A History of Triumph, Mostly Defeat and Incurable Hope at Wrigley Field", I was looking forward to a baseball history book. When I received the book and realized it was brief and would be a quick read, I was even more interested in the book.

But it's not really a book of history. While it loosely contains a collection of stories tracing a timeline though the history of the Chicago Cubs, it is overly loaded with heavy doses of George Will's musings. And therein is my issue with this book.

If you're a Cubs fan, you've probably heard all of these stories. If you are a sports fan (as I am) but not necessarily a Cubs devotee, you've probably heard many of them. But Will's ramblings distract from the book. He spends page after page covering such random topics as how beer shaped modern culture, natural selection and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and then attempts to relate all these to the Cubs and Wrigley Field.  Based on the book's title, this is not what I expected.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.