When Pride Still Mattered

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Clinton expert David Maraniss has written a very American story about a very American character, and you don't have to be a football fan to enjoy it. In his depiction of Coach Vince Lombardi, Maraniss demonstrates that a hero with blemishes can be more interesting than a flawless legend. Lombardi, the son on an immigrant Italian butcher, made his teams win by sheer guts and determination, and that is the theme that resonates. It is a pleasure to go back to a time when love of the game was a bigger issue than big money. Maraniss is not the best reader, but you trust him, and political junkies will particularly enjoy his presentation. M.D.B. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

October 4, 1999
In the history of American sports, no coach has been mythologized as much as the Green Bay Packers' Vince Lombardi (who has been immortalized with, among other tributes, a rest station on the New Jersey Turnpike). Yet 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 Lombardi's formative years as a player and coach at Fordham University through assistantships with West Point and the Giants and, finally, to his tenure as head coach of the Packers, Maraniss presents a portrait of a complicated human being who was a great teacher but a mediocre listener, an effective psychologist despite being rife with flaws. Though he often got hurt as a college athlete, Lombardi, as a coach, scorned players who couldn't withstand injury. His relationship with his wife and children was less than ideal. But Maraniss doesn't succumb to any reductive assessments of Lombardi as "tragic" or "heroic." As legend suggests, Lombardi was indeed a great motivator, but his success also derived from a cerebral approach to the game. The book's true punch comes from its myriad subplots: a hero from one small town (early 20th-century Brooklyn) revitalizing another in the Upper Midwest, or professional football and Lombardi coming into their own at roughly the same time. Maraniss spends far too much time on people and events whose influence on Lombardi isn't made apparent, and he relies too much on other sportswriters' descriptions of games. Yet like its subject, the book, for all its flaws, is intricate, ambitious and satisfying. First serial to Vanity Fair.

Few of even the most influential world shakers get the lengthy treatment from biographers that Pulitzer laureate David Maraniss gives Vince Lombardi in this lively bestseller. The audio version is 28 hours long! Does the legendary football coach deserve such attention? Narrator Davidson apparently thinks so. At the very top of Side One, he launches his reading at a high energy level, which he maintains--to this reviewer's amazement--throughout. His delivery, befitting the material, is manly, authoritative, and totally enjoyable. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine