Three Nights in August ─ Strategy, Heartbreak, And Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

Three Nights in August captures the strategic and emotional complexities of baseball's quintessential form, the three-game series. As the St. Louis Cardinals battle their archrival Chicago Cubs, we watch from the dugout through the eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa, considered by many to be the shrewdest mind in the game today. In his twenty-seven years of managing, La Russa has been named Manager of the Year a record-making five times and now stands as the third-winningest baseball manager of all time. A great leader, he's built his success on the conviction that ball games are won not only by the numbers but also by the hearts and minds of those who play.

Drawing on unprecedented access to a major league manager and his team, Buzz Bissinger brings a revelatory intimacy to baseball and offers some surprising observations. Bissinger also furthers the debate on major league managerial style and strategy in his provocative new afterword.

Buzz Bissinger is the author of Friday Night Lights and A Prayer for the City. Formerly a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer, he has won the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Award, among other honors. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and lives in Philadelphia.