When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi [Paperback]

In this groundbreaking biography, David Maraniss captures all of football great Vince Lombardi: the myth, the man, his game, and his God.

More than any other sports figure, Vince Lombardi transformed football into a metaphor of the American experience. The son of an Italian immigrant butcher, Lombardi toiled for twenty frustrating years as a high school coach and then as an assistant at Fordham, West Point, and the New York Giants before his big break came at age forty-six with the chance to coach a struggling team in snowbound Wisconsin. His leadership of the Green Bay Packers to five world championships in nine seasons is the most storied period in NFL history. Lombardi became a living legend, a symbol to many of leadership, discipline, perseverance, and teamwork, and to others of an obsession with winning. InWhen Pride Still Mattered,Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss captures the myth and the man, football, God, and country in a thrilling biography destined to become an American classic. An astonishingly good book. . . . A triumph, a classic American biography. Forges a near-perfect synthesis of fine writing and fascinating material. May be the best sports biography ever published. A superb book, one of the best on football that we have. A monumental biography. A masterly biography. . . . A finely crafted, multifaceted portrait of a life driven by obsession. Both the reach of the research and the grasp of Lombardi's character are impressive. It is a wonderful work. It is simply a superb biography.