Gift Card Ideas
Before the holiday season gets too far into the rearview, I thought I'd throw out some ideas for those with gift cards burning a hole in their pockets.
I wrote about some of my favorite football books in the summer of 2006, and all those would still make excellent choices. But here are some of my favorites that I've read in the last 18 months.
America's Game by Michael MacCambridge - If I ever taught a college course on the NFL, this would be the primary textbook. Now that sounds like a book jacket blurb! Just an unbelievebly well-told and complete saga of the NFL, especially in its early days. Can't recommend it highly enough.
About Three Bricks Shy of a Load by Roy Blount - Probably the coolest season-with-a-team book I've ever read. The separation between Blount and the team was practically non-existent, so you get a lot of great stuff from the infant days of the Steelers dynasty.
Johnny U by Tom Callahan - Callahan also wrote The GM, about Ernie Accorsi, but the Unitas book is more engrossing. I'd wait for paperback to come out on the GM, unless you can't wait to find out how Plaxico Burress doesn't like to be touched.
The Last Season of Weeb Ewbank by Paul Zimmerman - The crumbling middle of the Namath era, as the quarterback's injuries doomed Ewbank. For a colorful coach who won the two most signficant pro football games of all time, Ewbank is pretty overlooked. This book can probably only be found on used book sites on the internet, so the gift card idea is a stretch.
Sports Ilustrated's Great Football Writing is another solid option. Let me know if you guys have any favorites I missed. I feel like the football book market is underserved, but there are always great ones I haven't seen.
Comments
Great list, Gregg. And your 2006 list covered most of the greats as well, so there's not much left to recommend for pro football.
Under the football-related literature category, "A Fan's Notes" by Frederick Exley is a tremendous book. Sure it's fiction, but I can't recommend it highly enough.
Posted by: Chris Wesseling | January 1, 2008 03:19 PM
One book that was missing from both lists, that I thought was excellent was "Blind Side" by Michael Lewis (who also wrote the now infamous "Moneyball"). The most compelling part of the book is that it tracked a high school player who is currently playing in college, and is most likely going to be an NFL player at some point. Highly recommended.
Posted by: Chris Shen | January 2, 2008 10:35 AM
Yeah Blind Side was pretty good, I agree.
Posted by: Gregg | January 2, 2008 10:41 AM
Try Marv Levy's Where Else Would You Rather Be Than Right Here, Right Now.
Marv's anecdotes provide great insight into his personal belief of character, intelligence and integrity in an athlete over the physical aspect of the game.
The first 85 pages are slow, but the books moves very well after that.
Posted by: Christian | January 2, 2008 11:07 PM
Thx for giving me my winter reading list. Let me add one:
An old one, but my favorite fball book ever is Fatso by Art Donovan
Posted by: rb | January 5, 2008 11:09 PM