The New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and New England Booksellers Association Bestseller

Here is the remarkable, inside story of how savvy management turned baseball’s “cursed” team into world champions and how this success presented the biggest challenges of all. For the first time ever, a reporter was given full, unfettered access to the inner workings of a major league sports team, from the front office to the clubhouse. Seth Mnookin lived with the Red Sox in 2005, spending mornings with the front office, afternoons with the players, and evenings with the owners. Feeding the Monster offers startling new details on everything from the 2001 sale of the team, in which the winning bidders were rumored to be hand-selected by baseball commissioner Bud Selig, to Theo Epstein’s stunning decision to quit, and then return to, the team that had made him famous.

This behind-the-scenes account shows how owners John Henry and Tom Werner and CEO Larry Lucchino led the Red Sox to unprecedented popularity, spectacular on-field success, and greater profitability. Drawing on his unique access to players, management, and owners, Mnookin explains how Henry and Werner were only able to buy the team due to the blunders of bidders like Cablevision mogul Charles Dolan; how Nomar Garciaparra and Red Sox management had completely different views of their fatal contract negotiations; what led the Red Sox to acquire David Ortiz and why they almost got rid of Manny Ramirez; and how the A-Rod fiasco and Pedro Martinez’s defection to the Mets helped cause a rift between Epstein and Lucchino that finally erupted into public view this past October. Feeding the Monster shows how a cutting-edge organization can seemingly outwit its competition at everything from evaluating talent to running its business operations and still be caught unprepared for the difficulties that come with success.

Stuffed with exclusive information about the Sox up to the beginning of the 2006 season, Feeding the Monster is the rarest of books: one that reveals the inner workings of a public institution in such intimate detail that it helps us better understand the world we live in.