Share This Article

JACKIE ROBINSON: AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT, by Rachel Robinson, with Lee Daniels (Harry N. Abrams,Inc., 240 pages, $29.95).

As the title suggests, this biography of baseball great Jack Roosevelt (Jackie) Robinson by his widow is written from the perspective of their 32 years together. Illustrated with more than threehundred black and white photographs–many from family albums which have not been seen publicly before–the bookdetails the couple’s storybook romance, their marriage in 1946, and their later personal life, as well as Jackie’s earlycareer, his breaking of baseball’s racial color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, his successful years in the majorleagues that led to his induction in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and his continued work for the cause of civilrights after his retirement at the end of the 1956 baseball season.