No metropolis in America has more pure baseball spirit than St. Louis, Missouri. It's a love affair that began in 1874, when a band of local boosters raised $20,000 to start a professional ball club, and the honeymoon still isn't over. Now Peter Golenbock, the bestselling author and master of baseball oral history, has written another remarkable saga enriched by extensive and incomparable remembrances from the scores of players, managers, and executives who lived it.These pages capture the voices of Branch Rickey on George Sisler. Rogers Hornsby and his creation of the farm system. Hornsby on Grover Cleveland Alexander -- and Alexander on Hornsby. Dizzy Dean on -- who else? -- Dizzy Dean. And so many others including "The Man" himself, Stan Musial; Eldon Auker, Ellis Clary, Denny Galehouse, and Don Gutteridge on the 1940s Browns; Brooks Lawrence, the second man to cross the Cardinals' color line; Jim Bronsnan, the first man to break the players' "code of silence"; Tommy Herr, Darrell Porter, and Joe McGrane on Whitey Herzog's Cardinals; and Cardinal owner Bill DeWitt, Jr., on the team today.

The book is dedicated to "The Plastic People of the Universe," the wildly popular Czech Rock band, whose members were harassed, arrested, tried, and jailed by the communist authorities. This affront the freedom of creative expression drew the attention of Vaclav Havel, well-known playwright and satirist. It discusses Havel's philosophy of "living within the truth" and its role in the revolution, as well as the contributions of Adam Michnik of Poland and Janos Kis of Hungary in their respective countries. It also reviews civil society from a historic and contemporary perspective.