This book is of the most moving evocations of a Depression childhood you have ever read-the story of growing up in the shadow of the Gary steel mills with sports as the only way out. It is the frankest treatment of college football anyone dared write-about the sponsors, the coaches, the pressure, and pain. It is a matchless recreation of pro football's wildest team in its golden era -when Bobby Layne tossed bombs on the field and got bombed off it, and the Detroit Lions never stopped roaring. But the biggest reason of all is a man who's big enough not to be afraid to laugh, to cry, to tell it all like it really was. Alex karras.