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

Pretty good overall. Sometimes choppy, especially when you get these deep dives analyzing the home run physics and controversy around Mantle's moonshots and how far they traveled. A lot of mythology surrounding that stuff. I don't mind it once or twice but it felt like Leavy analyzed so many home ru......more

An unusual biography, in that instead of chronicling Mantle's life from birth to tragic death, the author has chosen to illuminate his life using landmark days in his career. At first I was unsure whether this structure would work, but in the hands of such an able writer as Leavy, it's a surprisingl......more

What a poignant work. . . . Mickey Mantle, the great New York Yankee slugger, led a desperate life. This work, by author Jane Leavy, tells the tale of his darker life. He drank too much and paid a heavy price for it. But he also displayed a growth of character and confronted his demons late in life.......more