Globe Pequot / Lyons Press
Pages: 224
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-888698-41-1 • Hardback • September 2002 • $24.95 • (£18.99)
978-1-4930-5510-4 • Paperback • November 2020 • $17.95 • (£13.99)
978-1-4930-5722-1 • eBook • November 2020 • $17.00 • (£12.99)
Brett H. Mandel is a writer and consultant in Philadelphia where he is engaged in civic activism and government-reform efforts. Previously, Brett served as the Executive Director of the National Education Technology Funding Corporation, a private, non-profit organization that worked to help local public school districts access cost-effective financing for school construction and renovation. Brett also served as Executive Director of Philadelphia Forward, a citizens’ organization promoting tax, government, and ethics reform; and as Director of Financial and Policy Analysis in the Philadelphia Office of the City Controller. Brett received his B.A. from Hamilton College and his M.G.A. from the Fels Center of Government of the University of Pennsylvania.
Brett is the primary author of Philadelphia: A New Urban Direction (Saint Joseph's University Press, 1999), a vision of Philadelphia's likely future without change and a comprehensive plan designed to make Philadelphia a preferred place to live, work, and visit. The book received the National Association of Local Government Auditors Special Project Award. Another
book, Minor Players, Major Dreams, (University of Nebraska Press, 1997) written from his perspective as an author, signed to a Minor League Baseball player’s contract, tells the inside story of Minor League life. His next book, Philadelphia: Corrupt and Consented, about the city’s struggle with municipal corruption, is due to be published in 2021.
A lifelong Philadelphian, Brett is the Commissioner of the Greater Philadelphia Men’s Adult Baseball League and the Board Chair of the Circadium School of Contemporary Circus, America’s first school of higher education for circus arts. Brett lives in the Fitler Square neighborhood of Philadelphia with his wife and three children.
"It makes people feel like they want to be kids again." Once he finished pitching batting practice and taking a few cuts at the plate, Mandel dug out his tape recorder and notebook and started talking to visitors. a book that tells the stories of people who found peace, hope and renewal at the baseball diamond carved out of a cornfield.
— Chuck Schoffner; Cincinnati Enquirer
In a fascinating blending of reality and fictions, the field has become a shrine to those qualities and to nostalgia itself. The stories shared there are so memorable that Philadelphia writre Brett H. Mandel compiled them in a book.
— Diane Daniel; Boston.Com
Will appeal to all those like him who find soul and fulfillment in all things sentimentally baseball. Is this Heaven looks at the remarkable appeal that draws roughly 75,000 people a year to visit the baseball field.
— Robert Strauss; The Philadelphia Inquirer
If you are willing to suspend disbelief for a second, you can almost convince yourself you've stepped into the film.
— Redford Observer
"Some of the stories, when I encountered them it was almost like I had to pinch myself," Mandel said. "I's find myself saying, 'this is great'.
— Chuck Schoffner/AP; The Post and Courier
A book that tells the stories of people who found peace, hope, and renewal carved out of a cornfield for the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams'
— Idependent Mirror
Senior citizens bring a glove even though they haven't thrown for ages. Somebody in a wheelchair is bein pushed around the bases. There's something very neat about htis field. It brings out something in people.
— Hattiesburg American
The hit movie appealed to Mandel immediately for its themes of redemption, its look at baseball and for unleashing feelings of hope which reside in us all. Mandel finds fathers reconnecting with sons at the site; he sees the final trip for an aging man and his family; and he meets tourists from all around Iowa, Chicago, and get this, Japan. The people who read this are charmed by the stories and they come away feeling Iowa is some special place.
— Tim Gallagher; Sioux City Journal
A book dedicated to examining whether the magic found in a popular Hollywood movie is fact or fiction. Looks at the effect traveling to America's heartland for the sake of running around the bases, shagging fly balls and knocking a few out of the park has had on countless fans of America's pastime.
— D. E. Kern; Express Times