|
|
(Larger Image)
|
The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation
by Sally Jenkins
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Doubleday (2007-05-08)
ISBN: 0385519877
EAN: 9780385519878
Dewy Decimal #: 796.332630974843
Hardcover: 352 pages
Edition: 1
Release Date: 2007-05-08
SKU: 080519004
Condition: Collectible: Very Go
Comments: This First Edition, First Printing copy is in excellent condition. No visible markings, highlights, underlining, tears to text. Tight spine. Clean Hard Cover with very tiny chip to top spine edge. Clean Dust Jacket also, with Light shelf/edge wear. This copy is a must have for the Sports Historian in you, at an affordable price. (L9-18)
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
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.
|
Customer Reviews
|
An excellent sports history
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-11-01
"The Real All Americans," the story of the Carlisle Indians football team, is more history than sports. Sports fans might be disappointed since the first 125 pages are mainly history, focusing on the Indian chief "American Horse" and a young soldier Richard Pratt, who went on to found the Carlisle School for Indians.
Pratt's experiment with the Indians began at Fort Marion with Sarah Ann Mather helping to teach and educate the Indians. Pratt's goal was "total erasure of the old tribal life and the abolishment of the corrupt reservation system." Many of the chiefs were upset by the changes forced upon the Indians at Fort Marion.
Carlisle, "a social experiment unlike other schools," fielded its first football team in 1894. Its players were usually outsized, physically abused by opponents, and discriminated against by officials. They played, however, with lots of heart.
The book details the evolution of college football, particularly among the Ivy League teams, the center of power. The Carlisle Indians gained respect of their opponents, while helping to revolutionize the sport.
The arrival of Jim Thorpe and his rise to fame is chronicled. From 1911 through 1913, Carlisle posted a 38-3 record.
After Carlisle beat Army, 27-6, in 1912, the New York Times wrote that "Carlisle played the most perfect brand of football ever seen in America." Carlisle's football program, however, ended after the 1917 season.
In the epilogue, author Sally Jenkins gives a thumbnail sketch as to what happened to some of the major figures associated with the Carlisle School for Indians after its football program ended.
Jenkins does a wonderful job telling the story of this legendary school and its football program. The book is thoroughly researched, footnoted and easy to read. Highly recommended for anyone interested in sports history.
|
|
Poor Research
Rating  (1)
Date: 2008-09-09
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.
|
|
The Real Americans
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-04-25
"The Real Americans" is a well written and researched book. I have always wondered about the beginings of Carlisle. I was would have like to see more about the students who attended. It was very sparce on details about the ending of the Carlisle a school. The young girls who atttended the school, what were their accomplishments. Not enough pictures of the students and Jim Thorpe. I was looking for more of the latter. As an overall review of the book, I found it very interesting and worth the reading time.
|
|
Three intertwined books...
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-04-13
This is actually three intertwined books. It begins with a history of the later stages of the Indian Wars in the American West and the slow steady marginalization of the Indians that followed. It then details the formation and history of the Carlisle Indian School, which was an important part of efforts to "civilize" the Indians. Finally, it follows the early history of football, mostly by relating the history of one of the most remarkable football teams of all, the Carlisle Indians.
It would be remarkable enough to do justice to any of those subjects in one short book, but the author manages to seamlessly intertwine all three in a page-turner of a narrative. Along the way, she paints detailed portraits of many of the complicated people who created the history.
The cumulative result is a thoroughly enjoyable book that is at the same time vitally important. An amazing number of issues dealt with in the book-- including the manner in which the US deals with its Native American peoples, the proper role of football at American colleges, and the nature of true amateurism in athletics-- have not been resolved even today, nearly a hundred years after the events related here.
This is a remarkable book that will more than justify the time taken to read it.
|
|
Come for the Football. Stay for the History.
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-03-03
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
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 has 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.
|
|
|
|
|