Summary and Reviews of When Pride Still Mattered by David Maraniss

When Pride Still Mattered by David Maraniss

When Pride Still Mattered

A Life Of Vince Lombardi

by David Maraniss
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (5):
  • First Published:
  • Sep 1, 1999, 544 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2000, 544 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

How Vince Lombardi rose to the top, and how his character and will to prevail transformed him, his wife, his children, his players, his sport, and ultimately the entire country.

When Pride Still Mattered is the quintessential story of the American family: how Vince Lombardi, the son of an immigrant Italian butcher, rose to the top, and how his character and will to prevail transformed him, his wife, his children, his players, his sport, and ultimately the entire country. It is also a vibrant football story, abundant with accounts of Lombardi's thrilling life in that world, from his playing days with the Seven Blocks of Granite at Fordham in the 1930s to the glory of coaching the Green Bay Packers of Starr, Hornung, Taylor, McGee, Davis, and Wood in the 1960s. It is also a study of national myths, tracing what Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Maraniss calls the fallacy of the innocent past, and an absorbing account of the mythmakers from Grantland Rice to Howard Cosell who shaped Lombardi's image.

Vincent Thomas Lombardi was born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on June 11, 1913. His early life was shaped by the trinity of family, religion, and sports; they seemed intertwined, as inseparable to him as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He was deeply influenced by the Jesuits, who taught him the philosophy he later used with his players, subordinating individual desires to a larger cause. The geography of his rise was the opposite of the small-town boy who makes it in the big city. This son of New York did not achieve fame until he took a job in remote Green Bay, Wisconsin. Before that, he had toiled anonymously for twenty years, first as a high school coach in New Jersey, then as an assistant at Fordham, at West Point (under the influential Colonel "Red" Blaik), and finally with the New York Giants. He was already forty-six when he was finally hired to coach the hapless Packers in 1959, leading them in the most storied period in NFL history, winning five world championships in nine seasons.

By the time he died of cancer in 1970, after one season in Washington during which he transformed the Redskins into winners, Lombardi had become a mythic character who transcended sport, and his legend has only grown in the decades since. Many now turn to Lombardi in search of characteristics that they fear have been irretrievably lost, the old-fashioned virtues of discipline, obedience, loyalty, character, and teamwork. To others he symbolizes something less romantic: modern society's obsession with winning and superficial success. In When Pride Still Mattered, Maraniss renders Lombardi as flawed and driven yet ultimately misunderstood, a heroic figure who was more complex and authentic than the stereotypical images of him propounded by admirers and critics.

Using the same meticulous reporting and sweeping narrative style that he employed in First in His Class, his classic biography of Bill Clinton, Maraniss separates myth from reality and wondrously recaptures Vince Lombardi's life and times.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

NY Times Book Review - Allen St. John
Maraniss never forgets that he is profiling a subject who was acutely aware (and in great measure the creator) of his own legend...[He] has a superb eye for detail.

NY Times Book Review - Allen St. John
Maraniss never forgets that he is profiling a subject who was acutely aware (and in great measure the creator) of his own legend...[He] has a superb eye for detail.

Publishers Weekly
... like its subject, the book, for all its flaws, is intricate, ambitious and satisfying.

Author Blurb David Halberstam
David Maraniss, one of America's most distinguished writers, has followed up his brilliant biography of Bill Clinton with a remarkable portrait of Vince Lombardi, a man as different from Clinton as it is possible to be. This is not just a book about sports or about a football coach. When Pride Still Mattered is an exceptionally well-written, thoughtful, and fair-minded portrait of one of the most important -- and compelling -- figures in modern American popular culture, and of the profound changes taking place in our society.

Author Blurb David Halberstam
David Maraniss, one of America's most distinguished writers, has followed up his brilliant biography of Bill Clinton with a remarkable portrait of Vince Lombardi, a man as different from Clinton as it is possible to be. This is not just a book about sports or about a football coach. When Pride Still Mattered is an exceptionally well-written, thoughtful, and fair-minded portrait of one of the most important -- and compelling -- figures in modern American popular culture, and of the profound changes taking place in our society.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked When Pride Still Mattered, try these:

  • Joe DiMaggio jacket

    Joe DiMaggio

    by Richard Ben Cramer

    Published 2001

    About this book

    In Cramer's hands, DiMaggio's complicated life becomes the story of America's media machine, the invention of a national celebrity in America, and the ways in which fame can both build and destroy.

  • Playing For Keeps jacket

    Playing For Keeps

    by David Halberstam

    Published 2000

    About this book

    More by this author

    A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights


More books by David Maraniss
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Becoming Madam Secretary
    by Stephanie Dray
    New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating novel about an American heroine France Perkins—now in paperback!

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Antidote
    by Karen Russell

    A gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town.

  • Book Jacket

    Jane and Dan at the End of the World
    by Colleen Oakley

    Date Night meets Bel Canto in this hilarious tale.

  • Book Jacket

    Girl Falling
    by Hayley Scrivenor

    The USA Today bestselling author of Dirt Creek returns with a story of grief and truth.

Who Said...

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think the university stifles writers...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

T B S of T F

and be entered to win..