Last Boy LP, The: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood - Softcover

"In sharp detail and graceful style, Leavy cuts through the myth and treats us to a rarely known Mantle: more flawed, more human and more likeable. A terrific read."--Tom Verducci, Co-author of the #1 bestseller The Yankee Years

"Every kid growing up in New York in the '50s wanted to be Mickey Mantle, including me.... Jane Leavy has captured the hold he had on all of us in this gripping biography."--Joe Torre, bestselling author and former manager of the New York Yankees

"This is one of the best sports biographies I have ever read. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, it reveals with stunning insight both the talents and the demons that drove Mickey Mantle, bringing him to life as never before."--Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Team of Rivals

"Part biography, part memoir, and part fan's note, The Last Boy is the most complete book ever about Mantle."--Salon.com

"The only thing about this book that is better than Jane Leavy's vivid prose is her astonishing reporting. To my knowledge, no one has ever investigated the life of an American athlete with Leavy's rigor and thoroughness."--Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition and Nine Innings

"Definitive."--Sports Illustrated

"Leavy shows Mantle at his unfathomable worst and unrecognized best. For even the most ardent Mantleologist, The Last Boy, is an education."--Time magazine

"Engrossing.... The Last Boy is a fresh, thorough examination of Mickey Mantle's life."--New York Newsday

"The Last Boy is something new in the history of the histories of the Mick. It is hard fact, reported by someone greatly skilled at that craft...and presented so that the reader and not the author draws nearly all the conclusions."--Keith Olberman, The New York Times Book Review

"Do not walk--sprint--to the bookstore to get a copy of The Last Boy."--Boston Globe

Drawing on more than 500 interviews with loved ones and fellow baseball players, the author crafts a deeply personal biography of the Yankee great, weaving her own memories of the major-league slugger with an authoritative account of his life on and off the field. (Biography & autobiography). Simultaneous.