The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation
You can view this book's Amazon detail page here.
Having read Sally Jenkins’ earlier book, It’s Not About the Bike with Lance Armstrong (http://bit.ly/elwAcm) and having truly enjoyed it, I thought I would give this book a shot. It’s also football season and I’m hungry to read more about the game.
I’d say that this book was interesting, but not all that enjoyable. The story is ostensibly about how the American Indians at the Carlisle Indian School created the modern game of football. In the end, the story is really more about how crappily the Indians were treated at the end of the 19th century in the US, how the Carlisle Indian School came into being and how “Pop” Warner impacted the game of football. None of that is bad, of course, but the first half of the book hardly even touches on football.
Like I said, the story is still interesting and the football parts are very interesting. Warner was a sports genius who changed the hard-hitting game of football to a strategic, fast-moving, passing game. It was perfect for the Indian school where the average player weighed about 160 pounds versus the bruising 200+ pound of the players at the schools they played.
Worth reading if you’re into reading about Indian affairs, the Carlisle Indian school or even in-depth football. Not too engaging, though.
- Started reading:
- 1st December 2010
- Finished reading:
- 10th December 2010