Tony Castro

TONY CASTRO is a Harvard and Baylor University-educated historian, Napoleonic and Hemingway scholar and the best-selling author of the literary biography 'Looking for Hemingway' and the landmark civil rights history 'Chicano Power,' which Publishers Weekly acclaimed as “brilliant… a valuable contribution to the understanding of our time.” His eighth book, 'Maris & Mantle: Two Yankees, Baseball Immortality, and the Age of Camelot,' was released on September 28 by Triumph Books. He is currently working on a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. Mr. Castro's latest book, 'Mantle: The Best There Ever Was' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) was the finale of his Mickey Mantle Trilogy that includes 'Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son' (2002) and 'DiMag & Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers' (2016). The New York Times hailed 'Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son' as the the definitive biography of the baseball icon. His poignant coming-of-age memoir 'The Prince of South Waco: American Dreams and Great Expectations' (2013) was praised 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." His other books include 'Gehrig & The Babe: The Friendship and the Feud' (2018) and 'Looking for Hemingway: Spain, The Bullfights and A Final Rite of Passage," which NPR named one of the best books of 2016. Mickey Mantle was Mr. Castro's childhood hero, as he was for many Baby Boomers. In 1970, while a young reporter in Dallas, Mr. Castro met Mantle who was dealing with life in retirement. The two men bonded over golf. Mr. Castro's friendship with Mantle would continue until Mickey's death in 1995. As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Mr. Castro did graduate work on the Age of Napoleon under French history scholars Laurence Wylie and Stanley and Inge Hoffman and studied comparative literature under Homeric scholar Robert Fitzgerald and Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. While at Harvard he also taught a class on The New Journalism at Winthrop House and lectured on Latino Politics at the Kennedy Institute of Politics. He is considered by many to be the leading expert on Latino politics in America. Mr. Castro is a graduate of Baylor University. He was also a White House Fellow at the Washington Journalism Center where he was assigned to The Washington Post. There his work caught the attention of editor Benjamin Bradlee who hired Mr. Castro as the Post's national correspondent reporting on the Southwest based out of Dallas. Mr. Castro also produced several Latino civil rights documentaries for KERA-TV, the Dallas Public Broadcasting Service affiliate; published in the Texas Observer an investigative series on conflicts of interest in interlocking directorships in the state’s biggest financial institutions; and reported extensively on financial and campaign improprieties among Hispanic appointees in the Nixon administration. He ultimately landed on an “enemies lists” of President Nixon’s re-election campaign. A former national correspondent for The Washington Post, Mr. Castro has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Observer, Sports Illustrated, L.A. Weekly, Saturday Review and Inside Houston magazine. He 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.