Football: Great Writing About the National Sport [Paperback]

Now in paperback, the definitive anthology about the sport that dominates our culture.

Since football’s meteoric rise in the mid-twentieth century, the standout writers on the sport—an All-Pro line-up that includes Red Smith, Frank Deford, Jimmy Breslin, George Plimpton, Richard Price, Charles Pierce, Michael Lewis, and Roy Blount Jr—have gone behind and beyond the spectacle to reveal the complexity, the contradictions, and the deeper humanity at the heart of the game.

In this landmark collection, which theSan Francisco Chroniclecalled“the finest football volume of all time”andMen’s Journal“the ultimate football reading list,”The Library of America and editor John Schulian bring together the very best of their work: gems of deadline reportage, incisive long-form profiles of football’s storied figures, and autobiographical accounts by players and others close to the game. Celebrating the sport without shying away from its sometimes devastating personal and social costs, the forty-four pieces gathered here testify to football’s boundless capacity to generate outsized characters and memorable tales. With a new preface by John Schulian. I'd take the over on this being the finest football volume of all time. . . . Nearly everything will knock you off the readerly line of scrimmage. —Colin Fleming,San Francisco Chronicle

This fall's load of football books is better than most: livelier, lighter on the lap. Most centrally there isFootball: Great Writing About the National Sport, edited by John Schulian. It's a necessary anthology, filling a gap as authoritatively as Red Grange did. —Dwight Garner,The New York Times

The Ultimate Football Reading List. —Men's Journal

“Editor John Schulian and the Library of America have produced an exceptional collectlÑ