Roger Kahn

Roger Kahn (October 31, 1927 – February 6, 2020) was an American journalist and author, best known for his 1972 baseball book The Boys of Summer.

Biography Roger Kahn was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 31, 1927, to Olga (née Rockow) and Gordon Jacques Kahn, a teacher and editor. His family was Jewish. He attended Froebel Academy, a prep school, then Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. He attended New York University from 1944–1947. He was a lecturer at Yale University, Princeton University, and Columbia University.

In addition to The Boys of Summer, Kahn wrote books such as Good Enough to Dream, a chronicle of his year as the owner of a minor league baseball franchise; The Era 1947–57, an examination of the decade during which the three New York clubs – the Dodgers, Yankees and Giants – dominated Major League Baseball; and Memories of Summer, a look back at his youth and early career, plus extended pieces on New York baseball legends Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. He also wrote a biography of the heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey, entitled A Flame of Pure Fire.

Kahn's 2006 book Into My Own is a memoir describing his friendships with Robert Frost, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Eugene McCarthy, and, in its last chapter titled Rescuing Roger, focuses on his son who predeceased him, Roger Laurence Kahn, who died by suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning in 1987. It covers the younger Kahn's bipolar disorder, heroin addiction, and time he spent with the educator Michael DeSisto at the DeSisto School; Andrew Ervin wrote in The Washington Post that the book "proves that Kahn's not only a great baseball writer but also something rarer: a great writer whose subject happens to be baseball."

Kahn cited as his journalistic influences, Stanley Woodward, John Lardner, and Red Smith.

Honors, awards, distinctions

Kahn was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame on April 30, 2006. He won the E. P. Dutton Award for best sports magazine article of the year five times.

Personal life Kahn married Joan Rappaport in 1950; they divorced in 1963. Their first child, daughter Elizabeth, died one day after her birth in 1954. Their son, Gordon Jacques, was born in 1957. Kahn married his second wife, Alice Lippincott Russell, in 1963; they divorced in 1974. They had a son, Roger Laurence, in 1964, and a daughter, Alissa Avril, in 1967. Their son, Roger, died by suicide in 1987.

Kahn died in Sarah Newman nursing home in Mamaroneck, New York, in February 2020, at the age of 92.