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In the storied history of
the National Football
League few players stand
out more than Johnny Unitas. The legendary quarterback of the Baltimore
Colts is widely regarded as one of the league’s greatest players, “the
football player,” according to Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Huff. In
Johnny U, the first authoritative biography of Unitas, author Tom
Callahan chronicles the life and career of this consummate athlete. Johnny
Unitas is regarded by many as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. In
addition he also possessed certain character traits that made him so
successful on the field. According to Callahan, “Few took more
punishment…his refusal to leave the field won his teammates respect…his
insistence on taking the blame for others’ mistakes inspired their love.”
These qualities helped Unitas develop into a fierce competitor who displayed
an almost ‘field general’ like quality on the field while possessing an,
“encyclopedic football mind in which he filed every play the Colts had ever
run.” Few observers of the game initially guessed that the skinny kid from
the University of Louisville would make it in the NFL. Unitas was rejected
at both the collegiate and professional levels by Notre Dame and the
Pittsburgh Steelers and began his career with a Pennsylvania sandlot team.
By 1958 his years of hard work and perseverance paid off when he led the
Colts to the NFL championship over the New York Giants. This game is
considered a seminal moment in American sports history since the Colts’
heartstopping overtime victory forever changed the Sunday television viewing
habits of millions of Americans and propelled the NFL to its dominance of
the American sports scene. Unitas’s incredible career continued until his
retirement in 1974. By that time he had established his reputation as one
of the NFL’s premier quarterbacks and most feared competitors. The
culmination of his career came in 1979 when he was inducted into the Pro
Football Hall of Fame.
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Operation
Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, And The Home Front, In The Words Of
U.S. Troops And Their Families.
Andrew Carroll, editor, Random House, 2006, 386 pages.
This book is the
result of an unprecedented project by the National Endowment for the
Arts (NEA) to establish a writing program for combat participants in
Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. The NEA’s goal was to
bring together some of America’s best writers and poets through a
series of workshops for enlisted and former military personnel of
these conflicts. These workshops would encourage them to share
their feelings, experiences, and beliefs in a written format to
underscore, “how crucially important the art of literature might be
to military personnel undergoing huge changes in their lives.”
These life changes were a result of the experiences of going into
battle; interacting with foreign troops/citizens; daily life on the
front lines; the effects on their spouses/loved ones; the brutality
of war; the tearful homecomings; and the ceremonies for those who
died for our country. The NEA’s original plan called for ten
workshops on five American military bases. When the program was
unveiled on April 20, 2004 it became clear from the overwhelming
public response that the plan was inadequate. The program was
quickly modified to offer fifty workshops on twenty-five bases in
five different countries (workshops were also conducted on an
aircraft carrier and fleet ship stationed in the Persian Gulf). The
program’s objective was to, “invite troops and their families to
discuss and write about their wartime experiences while the events
were still happening, rather than years later.” The result is, “an
unflinching and intensely revealing look into the lives of
extraordinary men and women. What they have written is without
question some of the greatest wartime literature ever published.”
Review by
Richard Sumrall
[Lincoln Public
Library District] [Richard Sumrall,
Lincoln Public
Library District]
[Louella Moreland, youth services librarian, Lincoln Public
Library District] |
