An engaging book that NFL fans will love and argue over endlessly.
The editors of a popular sports publication rank the best 100 players in NFL history.
Lead editors and panel members Dan Pompei and Mike Sando lay out the criteria for “the most irresistible exercise in sports: ranking the all-time greats,” including Hall of Fame membership, Pro Bowl appearances and All-Pro selections, metrics for various positions, and the more subjective difficulties of comparing different eras with different rules and attempting to guard against recency bias. The editors rank the 100 honorees in descending order, accompanied by feature articles written by several contributors that offer enlightening vignettes about each player's background, skills, and attributes on and off the field. Hardcore and casual fans alike may head directly for the chapter about O.J. Simpson, which happens to be one of the most compellingly written profiles in the book. Overcoming recency bias may well have been impossible; of the top 10, the panel included seven players who played in the 1980s, 1990s, or 21st century. As they always do with such lists, purists will have many problems with the order, especially given rule changes and the varying levels of competition. For example, how can Tom Brady be ranked ahead of Joe Montana, when Montana remained vulnerable to crushing hits by some of the greatest defenses in league history just to get to the Super Bowl, while Brady played in an era that protected quarterbacks and ran roughshod over an outmatched NFC East division? Of course, such exercises in ranking are often fool's errands. Perhaps it's best to take the approach of the late Green Bay Packers great Ray Nitschke (ranked 66th), who made it his business to remind newly enshrined Hall of Famers that no honored player loomed larger than any other. But what’s the fun in that? If Brady and Jim Brown are 1 and 2, who’s no. 3? The book includes forewords by Bruce Smith and Mike Ditka.
An engaging book that NFL fans will love and argue over endlessly.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780063329096
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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