Mickey Mantle's Last Home Run by Steven A. Falco deserves a 4 out of 4 stars. There are different positive aspects of this book to justify this rating. First, the book is a product of good research and personal experience of Steven. This inference is made from the brief profile of the author on the last page of the book, which reveals that Steven had played baseball while growing up. Also, this book is professionally edited; I could only spot one error in it.

The book is a story of a 15-years old boy popularly known as T.J. who has a near-obsession with baseball. This book contains subplots that teach lessons against racial prejudice and discrimination. T.J's obsession for the Mick makes him frequent Yankee Stadium, sometimes alone, with Jonathan, Frankie, and Phil, or at other times, with his father and brother. However, he breaks this practice when he has to wait at St. Patrick's Cathedral, together with Jonathan, Maggie, and her friend, to pay his last respects to the slain Robert Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Jonathan devices ways to ease the pain of other students during boring classes by creating school clubs for interested students. The strife between the Blacks and the Whites is heightened when T.J mistakenly hit a Black kid named Darrell during baseball practice and when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. T.J's life is endangered as it seems that the Black kids would like to take revenge for both incidents on him. Will he survive this plan, or will he be assassinated like Robert Kennedy?

 This book is exceptional, and it is recommended to young adults because there are lessons contained in the book that would be of help to them. Lovers of fictional books would also have a fantastic time reading this book.

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