A winner for fans of modern football.
A thorough but light-handed account of the making of a sports dynasty.
Peyton and Eli Manning are the big names in a football family with roots in the football-crazy Deep South, Eli renowned as the second-highest-paid quarterback in NFL history, Peyton as “the face of the most popular sport in America.” Yet the Mannings, as older readers and fans will know, go beyond the brothers. Longtime Sports Illustrated reporter Anderson (The Storm and the Tide: Tragedy, Hope, and Triumph in Tuscaloosa, 2014, etc.) begins and ends his vigorous story with Peyton’s triumphant performance at Super Bowl 50, when he ended his career as the lead quarterback for the Denver Broncos. As the author notes, Peyton’s numbers were legacy enough, with a record-setting number of 4,000-yard passing seasons, but he also was influential enough to change the rules regarding contact with defensive backs. Anderson digs in deep to trace the family franchise to the Depression era, especially to patriarch Archie Manning, who began as a rising star in basketball but, having failed an audition for a college slot, switched over to football at Ole Miss and, “a classic overachiever,” became a renowned quarterback with a healthy respect for the fundamentals of the game: controlling the ball with the fingers and not the palm, standing with balance, throwing straight and on-target. Archie’s college career helped improve a strained relationship with his own father, and he set numerous records and became a legend in Ole Miss lore. Archie Manning certainly isn’t an obscure figure in football, nor is his son Cooper, forced to leave the game for medical reasons, but it’s good to see both get more of their due from under the shadow of their more famous kin, and Anderson’s yarn never wobbles.
A winner for fans of modern football.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-88382-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book.
The co-founder of The Toast and Slate advice columnist demonstrates his impressive range in this new collection.
In a delightful hybrid of a book—part memoir, part collection of personal essays, part extended riff on pop culture—Ortberg (The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, 2018, etc.) blends genres with expert facility. The author’s many fans will instantly recognize his signature style with the title of the first chapter: “When You Were Younger and You Got Home Early and You Were the First One Home and No One Else Was Out on the Street, Did You Ever Worry That the Rapture Had Happened Without You? I Did.” Those long sentences and goofy yet sharp sense of humor thread together Ortberg’s playful takes on pop culture as he explores everything from House Hunters to Golden Girls to Lord Byron, Lacan, and Rilke. But what makes these wide-ranging essays work as a coherent collection are the author’s poignant reflections on faith and gender. Since publishing his last book, Ortberg has come out as trans, and he offers breathtaking accounts of his process of coming to terms with his faith and his evolving relationships with the women in his life. The chapter about coming out to his mother, framed as a version of the biblical story of Jacob and Esau, is just as touching as a brief miniplay entitled, “The Matriarchs of Avonlea Begrudgingly Accept Your Transition.” Throughout, Ortberg’s writing is vulnerable but confident, specific but never narrow, literal and lyrical. The author is refreshingly unafraid of his own uncertainty, but he’s always definitive where it counts: “Everyone will be reconciled through peace and pleasure who can possibly stand it. If you don’t squeeze through the door at first, just wait patiently for Heaven to grind you into a shape that fits.”
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982105-21-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
A gargantuan but surprisingly agile and spellbinding biography of the plain-speaking, plain-dealing Man from Missouri. As depicted by McCullough (Brave Companions, 1991, etc.), Truman, though the first President of the nuclear era, was fundamentally a throwback to 19th-century midwestern ideals of honesty. Like the young Teddy Roosevelt in the author's Mornings on Horseback (1981), the pre-Presidential Truman most impresses McCullough as a battler against overwhelming odds: the failed farmer and haberdasher; the WW I captain who kept his unit together under deadly fire; and the scorned product of the Kansas City machine who won Senate colleagues' respect by chairing an investigation into WW II defense spending and winning a ferocious primary contest. With the stage thus set, the narrative picks up whirlwind force, following Truman from his assumption of the Presidency upon FDR's death—when "the sun, the moon, and the stars" seemed ready to fall on him—through the decisions to drop the atomic bomb; confront Stalin at Potsdam; send troops to Korea (the most important decision of his Presidency, Truman felt); and fire MacArthur. The book's main event, however, is the legendary "Whistle-Stop Campaign" of 1948, when Truman puffed off the political upset of the century. Readers jaded by Vietnam and Watergate may ask: Could any President be this serene, honest, and courageous? Yet McCullough weaves his spell, convincingly limning a politician who didn't lie, steal, pay attention to pollsters or pundits, or quail in the face of diplomatic or political combat (his major fault seems to have been excessive loyalty to cronies who betrayed his trust). Truman apparently really was, as his Secretary of State Dean Acheson said, the "captain with the mighty heart." Rich in detail, enthralling, and moving: a classic Presidential biography.
Pub Date: June 19, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-45654-7
Page Count: 1120
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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