Book excerpt: From the author of A Season in the Sun, a memoir from one of America’s foremost sportswriters about his life and influences. After successful seasons as a newspaperman and magazine writer, Roger Kahn burst onto the national scene in 1972 with his memorable bestseller, The Boys of Summer, memorializing the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here he wrote a book for the hearts and minds of his readers. Chronicling his own life, Into My Own is Kahn’s reflection on the eight people who shaped him as a man, a father, and a writer. Into My Own is the touching memoir of an unassuming man, whose great love of baseball and literature led him into extraordinary experiences, opportunities, and friendships. Even amidst great family tragedy and personal difficulty, Kahn prevailed—amongst poets, writers, politicians, and most of all, ballplayers. “In this engaging memoir, Kahn…looks back at baseball and much more as he presents his episodic reminiscences as free-form essays arranged loosely around iconic figures from his past…Kahn has a graceful, personal style, full of deftly evoked color and characters, with a bit of the newspaperman's hard-bitten swagger and a two-fisted liberalism one doesn't see much anymore.”—Publishers Weekly Praise for Roger Kahn “As a kid, I loved sports first and writing second, and loved everything Roger Kahn wrote. As an adult, I love writing first and sports second, and love Roger Kahn even more.”—Pulitzer Prize winner, David Maraniss “A work of high moral purpose and great poetic accomplishment. The finest American book on sports.”—James Michener on The Boys of Summer “Kahn has the almost unfair gift of easy, graceful writing.”—Boston Herald