The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation [Hardcover]

Sally Jenkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2007

Sally Jenkins, bestselling co-author of It's Not About the Bike, revives a forgotten piece of history in The Real All Americans. In doing so, she has crafted a truly inspirational story about a Native American football team that is as much about football as Lance Armstrong's book was about a bike.

If you’d guess that Yale or Harvard ruled the college gridiron in 1911 and 1912, you’d be wrong. The most popular team belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle’s first students.

Years later, three students approached Pratt with the notion of forming a football team. Pratt liked the idea, and in less than twenty years the Carlisle football team was defeating their Ivy League opponents and in the process changing the way the game was played.
 
Sally Jenkins gives this story of unlikely champions a breathtaking immediacy. We see the legendary Jim Thorpe kicking a winning field goal, watch an injured Dwight D. Eisenhower limping off the field, and follow the glorious rise of Coach Glenn “Pop” Warner as well as his unexpected fall from grace.
 
The Real All Americans is about the end of a culture and the birth of a game that has thrilled Americans for generations. It is an inspiring reminder of the extraordinary things that can be achieved when we set aside our differences and embrace a common purpose.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sprawling, heavily researched sports tale, author and Washington Post reporter Jenkins (It's Not About the Bike, with Lance Armstrong) covers more than a half-century-from mid-19th century battles between the U.S. Army and Native Americans to the 1918 closing of Pennsylvania's seminal Carlisle Indian Industrial School-telling the long-buried story of Carlisle's football team (the Indians, natch), which defied tradition and arguably did more to shape the modern collegiate game than any of its Ivy League competitors. Founded in 1879 by Army Lt. Col. Richard Pratt, an abolitionist who believed Native Americans deserved a visible place in U.S. society, Carlisle introduced fans and opponents to shoulder pads, the forward pass and the reverse option. Led by renowned coach Glenn "Pop" Warner and player Jim Thorpe, regarded as one of the greatest athletes America has produced, the Indians' struggles, especially with racial and political bigotry, prove surprisingly prescient (think Don Imus). That said, Jenkins shoehorns so much peripheral history that football often takes a back seat; in addition, her detached narration gives the book a term-paper feel, made all the more obvious by the enthusiasm and pride she details in her subjects.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner may be familiar names, but it's unlikely that teens have heard of U.S. Army Captain Richard Henry Pratt or the Sioux leader American Horse. Jenkins introduces readers to these figures and others in her vivid social history of the decline of American Indian culture and the development of college football. Her lively writing features unbiased descriptions of major historical figures, thumbnail sketches of minor personalities, and cameos by Mark Twain and President Eisenhower. The book opens with familiar events–the battles between Native Americans and U.S. Army soldiers over Western territories and the abysmal treatment Native American tribes received at the hands of the government. Less widely known is Captain Pratt's dream of providing educational opportunities for Indians and his founding of the Carlisle Indian Training School in Pennsylvania. Jenkins's strength is in her sports writing; the most compelling sections of the book are descriptions of the Indians at Carlisle inventing new plays and prevailing against all odds in pivotal games against Harvard and West Point. The volume is enhanced by an eight-page spread of black-and-white photos with detailed captions. All Americans is a history book of heartbreaking stories that will appeal to teens interested in football or Native American history; it also has value as a narrative nonfiction supplement to the U.S. history curriculum.–Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (May 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385519877
• ISBN-13: 978-0385519878
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #678,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sally Jenkins is an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and is the co-author of the best selling It's Not About the Bike and Every Second Counts, written with Lance Armstrong. She lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Carlisle story is more than Jim Thorpe and football, June 23, 2007

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation (Hardcover)

For a few years, I lived adjacent to Haskell, an "Indian school" in Lawrence, Kansas. I had some, but little direct contact with the federal effort to provide higher educational opportunities for American Indians. It was a cursory exposure. It was also the place where Jim Thorpe started his formal education. For any longstanding football fan, the Jim Thorpe Carlisle story is familiar, popular and tragic territory. It may be a coincidence that Lars Anderson, who earlier covered the Jim Thorpe Army-Carlisle story has another book, "The All-Americans". Now we have the REAL All Americans and the story is a whole lot more fascinating than a simple rags to riches back to rags story like Thorpe's.

Although the opening scene is a fateful football match in New York, the real roots of the story lie in the Midwest, forty years earlier. Jenkins builds her story slowly, with a thorough history of the debacle we call "Indians and the U.S. Army". The horrendous treatment of the Indians by the federal government finally prompts a visionary officer to propose an educational alternative to warfare, as a method of assimilation into the white man's culture. In some respects, and certainly on the surface, this is an arrogant solution. Dragging children and young adults from their families, culture and land is the ultimate form of cultural smugness. But, given the period, the problem, and the potentail for a solution, the Carlisle solution was worth the effort. And, in many resepcts, it worked. Henry Pratt, an enlightened -- for that period -- Army officer commits most of his life to building an institution to serve Indians deprived of almost all of their land and dignity by Manifest Destiny and broken treaties. He is both a caring, paternal figure and a stern task master, both loved and despised. Much of the same can be said for Pop Warner, Carlisle's most famous coach. He once left the team for a year in a pique and went on first to Pitt, then to other schools before ending his career at Temple.

Football became a tool, one part of a strategy for the assimilating Indians to not only become part of American culture but also to wreak some symbolic vengeance on the oppressor, taking on Army on the playing field rather than the battlefield. And, for a time, this worked well. Pop Warner and Jim Thorpe helped build a short-lived but memorable dynasty, an ironic all-American icon. The sad part is their victory over Army was bittersweet and their success short-lived. Carlisle lost their following game and within five years, Carlisle was no more. War in Europe and a re-examination of this public investment in Indian education closed the school. Few students ever earned degrees from Carlisle in its forty years. Assimilation via education worked -- but only a little.

Jenkins offers a fascinating read with a strong narrative, interesting anecdotes and angles, and a healthy respect for history. She provides brief, follow up biographies on the key players and their lives after Carlisle. It isn't always a pretty picture, but you needn't be a football fan to enjoy this sad but engrossing story.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, even for non-football folks, June 10, 2007

By 

V. Egar - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation (Hardcover)

I heard this book reviewed on NPR and immediately purchased it. I am not particularly interested in football ( sacrilege, I know!) but the game between Carlisle and West Point peaked my interest. I saw a great exhibit at the Heard Museum several years ago about the Indian schools, Carlisle among them, and I wanted to know more about the school and the famous game.
The book is a fascinating account of the Carlisle school, the development of football, coach "Pop" Warner, Jim Thorpe and the famous football game with West Point. It will interest anyone with an interest in football history, but it is also of interest to those who want to know more about the great Indian chiefs, what the US did to try and control the Indians, what happened to the children of the great chiefs at Carlisle. The book also has other facts and anecdotes I found of interest. There is a fair amount about football at Princeton, Harvard, Yale and U of Pennsylvania (these teams all played Carlisle). There is also mention of Teddy Roosevelt and poet Marianne Moore, who taught at Carlisle for a short period.
The book is well written, a real pleasure. A great father's day gift! I have already purchased another copy for a friend and am passing my copy to my adult son as a "gotta read this!"

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Team That Invented Modern Day Football, June 12, 2007

By 

Earl A. Myers, Jr. - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation (Hardcover)

If you are a student of Indian culture and the game of football, you are in for the treat of your life. Sally Jenkins has given the reader an engrossing overlay of a school that attempted a social experiment of indoctrination and assimilation of displaced Western American Indians into a predominately white man's state of refinement. Though only partially successful in forcibly educating children of notable relocated tribes, Carlisle introduced students to life skills and to the newly emerging sport that would captivate the country in ensuing years.

Under tutorlage of the legendary coach Pop Warner, the Carlisle Indians would revolutionize the game. Reverses, hidden ball tricks, the single wing, sweeps, audibles, hurry up offense and most innovatively, the forward pass became the stock in trade of the team that included celebrated olympian, Jim Thorpe. In 1912, with a record of 11-0-1, including a 27-6 victory over the much touted Army team that fielded a young cadet by the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Carlisle Indians became the highest-scoring team in the country.

Scandal, governmental mismanagement, lack of visionary leadership, and later gridiron failures would eventually bring down this once esteemed institution, but its legacy is resurrected through the author's informative, entertaining, thought-provoking handiwork.

This written documentary has given myself, and hopefully all who indulge, a most enjoyable, rich, and rewarding read as we enter the summer season and anticipate the beginning of another collegiate football year.