Please join the Yale Club of Washington, DC for a conversation with F Mike Kail author of "Heroes with Humble Beginnings", a book discussing the early life challenges faced by figures in the worlds of sports, entertainment and politics.

Many of you will be familiar with the people he profiles.  Fascinated by ballplayers and Presidents in his younger years, Mike went on to study movie actors:

Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Josh Gibson, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.

James Cagney, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier and John Wayne.

Bill Clinton, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, and Ronald Reagan

Registration is open through June 8th. You can vote on your favorites in the registration link and a tally of your picks will be made June 1st to give Mike time to focus on your choices.

What these men have in common is what they lacked growing up: economic comfort and social status, as well as other difficulties: parents who died or were estranged, alcoholism, racism, religious bigotry and abuse.  In these respects, all were underdogs. 

“Heroes”  introduces you to their relatives, friends and mentors.  It talks about the places they lived, the food they ate and the clothes they wore.  It lets you know what they did in school and after school and identifies the high and low points of their childhoods.  It also notes any youthful hints of their future fame.

The author suggests our fascination with underdogs is rooted in the fairy tales and Bible stories we may have heard as children, reinforced by many Americans' subliminal understanding of the country’s underdog roots. 

David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer, wrote the Foreword to the book, which received advance praise from Chris Matthews, host of “Hardball,” Ann Hornaday, the Washington Post’s chief movie critic, Tim Kurkjian, ESPN’s senior baseball analyst, and Yale’s own Karl Marlantes, ’67, author of Matterhorn.

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