Customer Reviews

The Real All Americans

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a guy rule of thumb, when your wife says "I think you should read this book about football", it's a good idea to listen to her. My wife started recommending this book after the first chapter, and I was happy when she finally turned it over to me. Sally Jenkins' "The Real All Americans" is by turns fascinating, entertaining, and moving.

Anyone who has ever played football is likely to enjoy the description of the early stages of the game. It is amazing how brutal it could be, and how little regard there was for the "rules", such as they were, of the day. The phrase "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" comes to mind.

Ever wonder why we have "Pop Warner" football? Well, here is Warner in all of his glory. He does not come off as a particularly nice person, but as an innovator and a competitor, he had few peers. He took control of the speedy-but-undersized Carlisle Indian School football team in an era when brute force was what won football games, and he created a winning program by emphasizing speed, passing, and misdirection. My favorite anecdote? In order to create confusion, prior to a Carlisle game against Harvard he had players sew football-shaped patches onto their uniforms. In response, the Harvard coach had the balls painted the same crimson color of his team's jerseys. In a compromise, the patches and colored balls were both removed.

The book does more than just revisit football's roots. It is a fascinating history of the aftermath of the United States' western expansion. The director of Carlisle, LTC Richard Pratt, comes of as stern but fair, with the best interests (as he saw them) of his students at heart. He was a firm believer that the conquered tribes would fare best if assimilated into larger American society. The Carlisle Indian School was explicitly set up to remove children from their parents and their tribes, separate them from their heritage, and indoctrinate them into America. It was at best a mixed success, and it ultimately failed after Pratt left. For many, myself included, this chapter was missing from our history books. Jenkins' retelling is riveting and at times poignant.

So, think of this as two books for the price of one. If you are a fan of sport, you'll think the chapters on football are a hoot. If you enjoy American history, even in one of its darker moments, the descriptions of the moral dilemma facing the country and the tribes will fascinate you. Either way this book will be well worth the read.

5 stars.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not only for the history of the early years of football but also for an insight into the backgrounds and personalities of the larger than life central figures of the book.

This book does a great job about not only talking about the Carlisle football team with Jim Thorpe and their victories over major college football at the turn of the 1900's. It does a great job of tying in all of the cultural, historical, and contextual information about Native Americans in white society, and about how they succeeded or failed in their endeavors on their journey. The book also gives a great insight into Pop Warner, Jim Thorpe and how tiny Carlisle emerged into a football powerhouse.

This was a great book. I knew about the Carlisle School and I knew about Jim Thorpe but the complete story of their football prowess was completely absorbing. This book brought historic facts to life like a novel.

T. Duda

For revisionist history scholars/fans, The REAL ALL-AMERICANS, by Sally Jenkins, is one of the most important books ever written. It is important because it encompasses several themes and several area's, such as American history, Native Americans, education, assimilation, political science, and sports. If you are interested in those topics, this book speaks for itself. I suppose I am biased, being a Native American Studies scholar, but if you are Native American, this book will make you proud of your heritage. Used The REAL ALL-AMERICANS as a textbook and students liked it(so did the friends & relatives they loaned it to). If you are an educator or sports fan, you will learn some new and interesting things. At first glance, it may seem to be merely a sports book, but it is much more. I give it my highest recommendation.

Don't be fooled by the media blitz behind this book. It is filled with serious errors and is the product of poor, second hand, research. The "Long Knives" metaphor around which this book is built is just plain false. Jenkins picked that up from Babe Weyand's first book. He, in turn picked it up from none other than the less than believable 1940-50's sportscaster Bill Stern who included it in a 1948 ghost written book for juvenile readers without single authoritative source behind it. In a lengthy series of correspondence and ghost written articles Warner never mentions the Long Knives pep talk once. Nor do authoritative and contemporaneous (with Warner) football historians such as Allison Danzig and Tim Cohane. As to the double wing, Warner's correspondence, newspaper articles and interviews reveal that the Warner was using the single wing in 1906 and the double wing in 1910. Even Army in this game used the single wing as were many other teams in the Country. The Indians didn't consider Army very important. The "Big Four" (Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale) were far more important to Carlisle and Warner than Army. As to Ike. He was a bit player on a terrible "D" who was knocked out of the game when, comic book like, he and his teammate Charley Benedict collided headon in a missed attempt to "high low" Thorpe in the 3d quarter. If the "Long Knives" metaphor can be distilled into one game it is the 1905 game between Carlisle and the Cadets at West Point - seven years closer to Wounded Knee - and a game far more important on the national stage than the 1912 game. It took a special act of the War Department to be played at all. Jenkins doesn't even mention it. The Indians won that game too. Want more? See my "There Were No Oysters - The Truth About the 1912 Army vs. Carlisle Game" which I wrote earlier this year in response to Jenkins' and Lars Anderson's companion book about the 1912 game.

I would not recommend this book and it got 1 star because I couldn't give it less!

I bought this as a Christmas present for my boyfriend. I was trying to find a book about football he hadn't read and this was recommended to me. He just finished it last night, 7 months later. Only a page was devoted to "the game that changed football".

I mailed this book Priority mail to my son-in-law -- $7.70 to mail.

He recived an empty, undamaged box. What a wonderful postal system we have.