The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood

by Jane Leavy

Book Overview

Award-winning sports writer Jane Leavy follows her New York Times runaway bestseller Sandy Koufax with the definitive biography of baseball icon Mickey Mantle. The legendary Hall-of-Fame outfielder was a national hero during his record-setting career with the New York Yankees, but public revelations of alcoholism, infidelity, and family strife badly tarnished the ballplayer's reputation in his latter years. In The Last Boy , Leavy plumbs the depths...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060883529
• ISBN13: 9780060883522
• Release Date: October 2010
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

From one of the millions of Mantle fans - A book of Triumph and Tragedy.

I was born in ‘53 at the time when Minnesota didn’t have a MLB franchise. Of the eight males in our family we followed our father who grew up during the depression a devoted NY Yankee fan. The WA Senators relocated to Mpls and thus the MN Twins gave us a hometown team whom we all loved including my father. Anytime the Yankees were in town my dad always went to At Least one game and brought the middle group of us kids to a $2 left field bleacher seat at the old Metropolitan Stadium while he and mom sat in the box seats behind home plate. This was early to mid sixties. The Twins were very good back the but the Yankees were the Yankees. I was able to see live the many great players of the the most iconic sports franchise in the world. I was young and knew nothing of the crazy lifestyle of many of them - especially our beloved Mick. I didn’t rate it a ‘5 because I felt there was not enough real descriptive baseball play and the author spent to much print time on long overly extensive descriptive areas where less would have been more. Another reviewer called the book a “hit job”. I didn’t see it that way. The authors work gave me a deep insight into “ some of the many triumphs and possibly too much of the tragedy. I felt sad for the last third of the book. Mick is still my hero and nothing could change that - he was just a deeply flawed and troubled man - yet an iconic sports figure that truthfully we never really got to see just how truly great he could have been w/o all the terrible injuries et al. “We love you Mick - we always will” God rest your soul for eternity 💕

This book stinks

This book is a biased,hit job by a leftist,Jewish,New Yorker, who is trying to distance herself from the crush, she one had on the "blonde.blue-eyed Mick".It is dripping with disparagement of Mantle's Oklahoma roots and lifestyle.The writer even states that if Willie Mays was White he would have been acknowledged a better superstar ballplayer than the The Mick. The tone of the whole book is negative and sad.