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David Maranis, When Pride Still Mattered (1999) Maraniss is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton, and is an associate editor at The Washington Post. In this biography of the legendary national football coach Vince Lombardi, Maraniss sets out to dispel the many Lombardi myths shaped over the years and to present an accurate account of how the son of Italian immigrants became one of the greatest professional American football coaches of all time. Much of the book is devoted to the development of Lombardi's ethics and character: how during the twenty years Lombardi remained relatively unknown he was influenced by the trinity of sports, religion and family. The book culminates with the stuff of the Lombardi legend: leading the Green Bay Packers to five championships in nine years that began in 1959 when Lombardi was 46. Maraniss makes clear the roots of Lombardi's image as an upholder of old-fashioned values—discipline, honesty, loyalty and obedience—and also reflects on how the nation invested in Lombardi an obsession with winning that lasted until his death from cancer in 1970. From Publisher's Weekly: "This fine biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post is a blast of cool air among the usually overheated roster of sports biographies." From The Post-Gazette: Why Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss would turn his attention to the over-celebrated football coach 29 years after his death isn't terribly clear anywhere in "When Pride Still Mattered," but what is clear is that Maraniss went after this project as Lombardi himself would, with a religious passion for methodology and an insatiable curiosity for detail. MORE: Post-Gazette Review Book excerpt from bookbrowse.com Amazon (synopsis and reviews) |
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