The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together by Michael Shapiro - 2003

Doubleday, 2003. First edition. Hardcover. As New/as new. As new in dust jacket. First printing. Hardcover. 356 pp. with index. Illustrated with photographs. The sun was setting on "The Boys Of Summer", the 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers. They had finally won a World Series the year before and would abandon Brooklyn after the 1957 season. In 1956, the group that included Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Clem Labine, Carl Furillo and the rest, would defend their crown in a heated neck-and-neck pennant race against the Reds and the Braves. They would prevail (only to l,ose to the Yankees again in the Series) but this book looks underneath the surface at an aging team, a borough that was undergoing seismic changes in attitudes and population, a dollar-squeezing owner (Walter O'Malley) who was casting his eyes to the West Coast, and the powerful New York City urban czar (Robert Moses) who blocked the building of a new stadium.