The tales in Leigh Montville’s Why Not Us? read like a Chicken Soup for the Soul of the Red Sox fan.

You won’t find a better book that captures the essence of what it’s like to be a Red Sox fan and why the World Series victory seemed to empower us, even change our lives, while proving to us all that anything is possible.

183 pages Hard Cover

John Feinstein summed up Why Not Us? quite profoundly when he stated: "If you want to understand what the Red Sox finally winning the World Series REALLY means, this is the book for you."

Montville gets to the core of why the Red Sox matter so much to so many of us. It’s a book about the people – the fans – that have made the Red Sox such an important fixture in the lives of New Englanders and beyond.

Why Not Us? is a quick and entertaining read that's hard to put down. Over the course of 183 pages, the author touches all the bases of Red Sox Nation, from the nun praying for victory in New Hampshire to capturing the emotions of the crew at The Baseball Tavern on Brookline Ave.

Besides the dozens of fans interviewed, past Sox such as Bill Lee and Joe Morgan chime in with their feelings, as does current player David McCarty and the father of Red Sox GM Theo Epstein.

A chapter is even dedicated to the messages that were posted on the Sons of Sam Horn website before Game 7 in New York.

Everybody has a story to tell of where they were when the Red Sox vanquished the Yankees, and then the Cardinals, to finally end 86 years of frustration and heartbreak. But it’s within the pages of this book where you can really get a feel on the pulse of Red Sox Nation as a whole.

It's not often you can read a book and relate to the majority of its contents, but if you are a Red Sox fan you will feel that this book is written specifically for you.

- Boston's Pastime
Available for purchase at Amazon.com

WHY NOT US?
The 86 Year Journey of the Boston Red Sox Fans from Unparalleled Suffering to the Promised Land of the 2004 World Series by Leigh Montville
PublicAffairs Press

Generation after generation watched and hoped and prayed for victory. And generation after generation turned away frustrated and disappointed - 1946 (when the Sox lost the World Series in 7 games), '48 (lost a one game play-off to Cleveland), '49 (heartbreak to the Yankees), '67 (again, lost the Series in 7), '75 (and again, lost the Series in 7), Bucky in '78, Buckner in '86, Boone in 2003. Yet every spring the fans flocked back, hopeful again. The losing, the angst, the self-flagellation became so routine that it even developed marketing names. The suffering was called "The Curse of the Bambino." The sufferers were called "Red Sox Nation" - the ultimate underdogs. Would it ever end?

And then it did.

Why Not Us? is about what the Red Sox's amazing victory in the 2004 World Series meant to the fans. It's about how it felt to be a Red Sox fan - not only at 20 minutes to midnight on October 27, 2004, but decades before. Best-selling author Leigh Montville has interviewed dozens of fans: friends, friends of friends, old sportswriters, ball players, public figures, and plain folk. Here are their stories - bittersweet stories of passion and pain, eternal hope and crushing despair, the seemingly endless agony and the strange ecstasy of being a Red Sox fan.

"This is the story about Red Sox fans, told by a master storyteller. It is funny and sad and occasionally heartbreaking and always hopeful, the way Red Sox fans were always hopeful that one day there would be the happy ending that the 2004 Red Sox finally gave them. These are snapshots from the country of Red Sox faithful, told by one of their own, doing what good snapshots are supposed to do: Make you remember the good times."
-- Mike Lupica, author of Travel Team, a #1 NY Times Bestseller

About the Author
Leigh Montville is the best-selling author of Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero. He has been a sports columnist at the Boston Globe and is a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He lives near Fenway Park.