Howard Bryant is the author of Shut Out- A Story of Race and
Baseball in Boston, which was a finalist for the Society for
American Baseball Research's 2003 Seymour Medal, and Juicing the
Game- Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League
Baseball. He is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine;
appears regularly on ESPN's The Sports Reporters, ESPN First Take,
and Outside the Lines; and serves as sports correspondent for NPR's
Weekend Edition Saturday. He lives in western Massachusetts.
Visit the author's website at- www.howardbryant.net.
“Beautifully written and culturally important . . . tells the Aaron
story with gusto and a ferocious sweep. . . . Bryant may just have
given us a classic.”
—The Washington Post
“Illuminating and rigorously researched.”
—New York Times Book Review
“A welcome and long-overdue portrait . . . thoughtful, insightful
and deeply engaging. . . . It easily stands as one of the most
impressive profiles of a ballplayer in years.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Bryant is a great writer for a great subject. . . . Mr. Aaron’s
story is the epic baseball tale of the second half of the 20th
century.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Impressive. . . . Nuanced. . . . For baseball junkies, The Last
Hero offers enough about ballplayers of the era and the game to
amply satisfy. But fortunately this book offers more. This is not
mere hagiography. This is the tale of a man performing in the
public eye, laboring under a persona projected by others with
preconceptions of their own, but who gradually moves forward in his
quest for self-determination.”
—Bill Nowlin, The Boston Globe
“Brawny. . . . The Last Hero had the forceful sweep of a
well-struck essay as much as that of a first-rate biography.”
—The New York Times
“The best baseball biography to come along in years, a work that
fuses the storytelling acumen of a David Halberstam with the
sensitivity for race and sport embodied by writers such as Dave
Zirin and William Rhoden. . . . For readers eager to know the man
behind the numbers and the footage, Bryant hits one out of the
park.”
—The Bay State Banner
“Perfect for the sports fan and the history buff.”
—Good Morning America
“No one was more important to the game of baseball in the last half
of the 20th century than Henry Aaron and no one writes about that
supremely talented man, that tumultuous time and this treasure of a
game better than Howard Bryant. Together, they are an extraordinary
combination, and the book Bryant has written gets to the heart of
the complicated and dignified, patient and consistent genuine hero
that is Henry Aaron.”
—Ken Burns
“Marvelous. . . . Wrists, legs, heart, brain—here is the full
picture of a great man and ballplayer who finally gets his
due.”
—David Maraniss, author of Clemente
“There will surely be other books on Hank; there may never be a
better book on Henry Aaron than Bryant’s The Last Hero.”
—Mobile Press-Register
“A fascinating and at times a troubling book, which revivified the
lovely old game for me.”
—Tracy Kidder
“A must read for baseball fans of every generation.”
—Booklist
“We already know Henry Aaron as one of the greatest players in the
history of baseball. Now, in Howard Bryant’s impeccably
researched and nuanced biography, we know Henry Aaron not just
as a great ballplayer, but as a remarkable man. In The Last Hero
Bryant asks the hard questions and cuts through the myths to create
a timeless and unflinching portrait of an American icon and his
times. And as in any great biography, in learning about
Aaron’s life we also learn something about our own.”
—Glenn Stout, series editor, The Best American Sports Writing
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