It’s difficult to imagine today–when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity–but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. Yet in the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age. Pro football’s ascent is an epic American story, and America’s Game does it full justice. Beginning with the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, Michael MacCambridge traces the game’s grand transformation, with particular attention paid to six key franchises–the Rams, Browns, Colts, Cowboys, Chiefs, and Raiders–and how their fortunes reflected the larger growth of the game itself. Along the way we meet the sport’s legendary architects, men such as Pete Rozelle, George “Papa Bear” Halas, Bert Bell, Tex Schramm, and Lamar Hunt, as well as a wide range of its memorable characters–including Johnny Unitas, Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, Jim Brown, Al Davis, Joe Namath, Bill Walsh, and Deion Sanders. In the process we witness the rivalries, the games themselves, and the passion that have made professional football the nation’s signature sport. MacCambridge continues the story through the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence under Paul Tagliabue. The unique portrait of the modern game’s inner workings and relentless competitiveness sheds light on contemporary stars such as Ray Lewis and Peyton Manning, as well as on the men whose leadership skills are scrutinized and second-guessed by much of the country, celebrated coaches such as Bill Parcells, Dick Vermeil, Tony Dungy, and Brian Billick. Magisterial and sweeping, definitive and unprecedented in scope, America’s Game is cultural history at its finest. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, it is a unique lens through which to view the past sixty years of American history.

America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation

MacCambridge, Michael

History

Random House]

It’s difficult to imagine today—when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity—but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. In the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age.
America’s Game traces pro football’s grand transformation, from the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, to the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, this is an essential book for any fan of America’s favorite sport.

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

The first book to tell the fascinating story of "Sports Illustrated" from its birth in 1954 well into the 1990s, documenting its journey to the top of its field and into the hearts of generations of sports fans. Filled with inside stories about the sport of magazine publishing and its most powerful and charismatic players, this book is a must-read for anyone who cares about sports, good writing, and the high-stakes world of media business. Author Michael MacCambridge brings life to American sportswriting. Anyone interested in late-20th century popular culture will get enormous pleasure from this book. An entertaining potpourri of personalities, characters, intrigue, and suspense. "A fabulous read." B&W photos.

Franchise: A History Of sports Illustrated Magazine

Business & Money

Biography & History

Diane Pub Co.

"I think over the years, it legitimized sports. All of a sudden, you could read a sports magazine, and still be considered able to read, for starters." -- Ray Cave
Sports Illustrated magazine is one of the great publishing success stories of the past 50 years -- a pop cultural phenomenon that has grown into a financial monolith, generating profits of more than one billion dollars since 1984. But if its success seems inevitable in retrospect, you don't know the whole story.
Launched by Time Inc. patriarch Henry Luce in 1954, SI was for years dismissed by many mainstream sports fans as a snobbish, upper-crust magazine. One writer called it "a slick cookbook for the two-yacht family." But in the late '50s and early '60s, SI's prose was altered and enlivened by a new breed of smart, irreverent sportswriters, who were unapologetic about the central role of sports in modern society. They worked under legendary managing editor Andre Laguerre, the hard-drinking Frenchman who instilled SI with a breadth of vision that no sports magazine had ever possessed. From that collaboration emerged the blueprint for modern sports journalism, as well as the quintessential middle-class American magazine of the postwar era. The period also saw the debut of the controversial swimsuit issue, still the highest profile special issue in American magazine publishing.
Laguerre's transformation of the magazine -- which largely took place in a series of small, untrendy bars in midtown Manhattan in the '60s and '70s -- is one of the great untold stories of American journalism. It features a superb team of larger-than-life sportswriting legends like Dan Jenkins, George Plimpton, Frank Deford and Roy Blount, Jr., as well as cutting-edge photographers like Walter Iooss, Jr. and Neil Leifer.
The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine is the first book to tell the story, documenting the development of one of the most fascinating and dominant franchises in all of American sports, from its obscure beginnings to its present-day prominence. Filled with never-before-told inside stories about the game behind the games, it's a book for anyone who cares about sports, good writing and the high stakes world of modern media business.
Michael MacCambridge worked for eight years as a columnist and critic at the A ustin American-Statesman, writing about movies, music, and popular culture. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, Danica Frost.

The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine

Hyperion

"It's All Part of the Game" dramatically recounts how, against the odds, "Sports Illustrated" grew from a misbegotten enterprise into a cultural institution. From halting editorial beginnings, "Sports Illustrated" has evolved into a journalistically tough and visually spectacular magazine that remains one of the truly influential voices in journalism. photo insert.

Chuck Noll: His Life's Work (Regional)

Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls and presided over one of the greatest football dynasties in history, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the ‘70s. Later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his achievements as a competitor and a coach are the stuff of legend. But Noll always remained an intensely private and introspective man, never revealing much of himself as a person or as a coach, not even to the players and fans who revered him. Chuck Noll did not need a dramatic public profile to be the catalyst for one of the greatest transformations in sports history. In the nearly four decades before he was hired, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the least successful team in professional football, never winning so much as a division title. After Noll’s arrival, his quiet but steely leadership quickly remolded the team into the most accomplished in the history of professional football. And what he built endured well beyond his time with the Steelers – who have remained one of America’s great NFL teams, accumulating a total of six Super Bowls, eight AFC championships, and dozens of division titles and playoff berths. In this penetrating biography, based on deep research and hundreds of interviews, Michael MacCambridge takes the measure of the man, painting an intimate portrait of one of the most important figures in American football history. He traces Noll’s journey from a Depression-era childhood in Cleveland, where he first played the game in a fully integrated neighborhood league led by an African-American coach and then seriously pursued the sport through high school and college. Eventually, Noll played both defensive and offensive positions professionally for the Browns, before discovering that his true calling was coaching. MacCambridge reveals that Noll secretly struggled with and overcame epilepsy to build the career that earned him his place as “the Emperor” of Pittsburgh during the Steelers’ dynastic run in the 1970s, while in his final years, he battled Alzheimer’s in the shelter of his caring and protective family. Noll’s impact went well beyond one football team. When he arrived, the city of steel was facing a deep crisis, as the dramatic decline of Pittsburgh’s lifeblood industry traumatized an entire generation. “Losing,” Noll said on his first day on the job, “has nothing to do with geography.” Through his calm, confident leadership of the Steelers and the success they achieved, the people of Pittsburgh came to believe that winning was possible, and their recovery of confidence owed a lot to the Steeler’s new coach. The famous urban renaissance that followed can only be understood by grasping what Noll and his team meant to the people of the city. The man Pittsburghers could never fully know helped them see themselves better. Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work tells the story of a private man in a very public job. It explores the family ties that built his character, the challenges that defined his course, and the love story that shaped his life. By understanding the man himself, we can at last clearly see Noll’s profound influence on the city, players, coaches, and game he loved. They are all, in a real sense, heirs to the football team Chuck Noll built.

Biographies & Memoirs

University of Pittsburgh Press

Nfl 100

Manning, Peyton

National Football League

Fleder, Rob

Abrams

A Super Bowl-winning former head coach provides an insider perspective on how off-field battles affect playtime competitions, sharing the additional insights of influential NFL figures to discuss how team building is negotiated and the economic pressures facing coaches and players.

More than a Game: The Glorious Present and Uncertain Future of the NFL

Billick, Brian

Industries

Scribner

Written by award-winning author Michael MacCambridge, this is the definitive, official biography of one of the 20th century’s most important and beloved sporting figures; the soft-spoken, strong-willed man whose audacious challenge to the National Football League transformed American sports. Hunt revolutionized three different sports—pro football, tennis, and soccer—winding up in the Hall of Fame of each. Drawing on 50 years of Hunt’s personal papers and more than 200 interviews, MacCambridge provides an intimate, original portrait of the man forever captivated by these serious pursuits we call games. "I can't separate what part of pro football is business and what part is personal with me," he said. "I just know that it is very important that I succeed." He had loved games as a young boy, had played them as a young man, and now, as a naive but determined 27-year-old in the summer of 1959, Lamar Hunt announced that he was going to launch a new football league. What he couldn't possibly have known on that day was that the forces of the entrenched National Football League would soon be arrayed against him. The league would place its own team in his hometown of Dallas, in direct competition with his team, and would attempt to undermine the new league, trying on repeated occasions before that first season to prevent the new American Football League from ever starting. And what the NFL couldn't have known, but would soon find out, was that Hunt, the mild-mannered, bespectacled son of legendary oilman H. L. Hunt, had an indomitable will, and patience beyond his years. Resolute and innovative, he successfully launched the AFL and, seven years later, helped broker a merger deal, which created the need for a championship game between the two leagues. Then he came up with the name of the game--the Super Bowl. Never before, and not since, has anyone with so many resources spent so much time watching, participating in, and being captivated by the absorbing ritual of sports and the suspended state of play. His accomplishments would put him in the company of the other giants of American sports--Charles C. "Cash and Carry" Pyle, Abe Saperstein, George Halas, Branch Rickey, Red Auerbach, Pete Rozelle. Each was present at a revolution. But Hunt, significantly, was present at a number of revolutions. And he was the catalyst for each one. Before his death in 2006, Hunt revolutionized three different sports--pro football, tennis, and soccer--winding up in the Hall of Fame of each. Written by award-winning author Michael MacCambridge, Lamar Hunt: A Life In Sports is the definitive and official biography of one of the 20th century's most important and beloved sporting figures; the soft-spoken, strong-willed man whose audacious challenge to the NFL transformed the landscape of American sports, but only served as an opening act to his epic sporting journey. Drawing on 50 years of Hunt's personal papers and more than 200 interviews, author Michael MacCambridge provides an intimate, original portrait of the man forever captivated by these serious pursuits we call games.

Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports

Sports & Outdoors

Biographies

Andrews McMeel Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MacCambridge, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MacCambridge, Michael

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MacCambridge, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation

America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation

Franchise: A History Of sports Illustrated Magazine

The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine

The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine

Chuck Noll: His Life's Work (Regional)

Chuck Noll: His Life's Work (Regional)

Nfl 100

More than a Game: The Glorious Present and Uncertain Future of the NFL

Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports