Mantle: The Best There Ever Was

Author Bio: Tony Castro

Tony Castro, whom the New York Times has called the definitive biographer of Mickey Mantle, is a Harvard and Baylor-educated historian and author of seven books. Mantle: The Best There Ever Was is the finale of his Mickey Mantle Trilogy, which includes Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son and DiMag & Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers. His other books include Gehrig & the Babe: The Friendship and the Feud and Hemingway: Spain, The Bullfights, and A Final Rite of Passage. Tony is also the author of the landmark civil rights history Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America, which Publishers Weekly acclaimed as "brilliant . . . a valuable contribution to the understanding of our time." His poignant coming-of-age memoir The Prince of South Waco: American Dreams and Great Expectations was hailed by distinguished Texas editor and educator Tony Pederson for its "startling and frequently disturbing insights into growing up Hispanic and talented in Texas in the 1950s and 1960s. He lays bare the tortured and sometimes heartbreaking soul of his youth and life as a young adult." As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, Tony studied under Homeric scholar and translator Robert Fitzgerald, Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, and French history scholars Laurence Wylie and Stanley Hoffman. Tony lives in Los Angeles with his wife Renee LaSalle and Jeter, their black Labrador retriever. Their two grown sons, Trey and Ryan, also reside in Southern California.