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Bringing the Heat |  | Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 434303
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1 Reprint
Pages: 512
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0871137720
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.332640974811
EAN: 9780871137722
ASIN: 0871137720
Publication Date: January 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Bringing the Heat is the story of one team's season-long campaign for the NFL championship, told through the personal stories of the men on the field and the coaches, managers, and owner on the sidelines. The team is the 1992 Philadelphia Eagles, a group of players assembled in the iconoclastic image of their former head coach Buddy Ryan. They are known throughout the league for their ferocious defense and for the otherworldly talents of their quarterback Randall Cunningham.
Award-winning journalist Mark Bowden gets deep inside the world of professional football in a way no writer has ever done before, with an insightful and hilarious portrait of one of the most exciting teams ever to play the game. He spares none of the game's ugliness - the greed, the racism, and the often sadistic violence - while capturing the beauty of athleticism at its highest level, the courage of men who face each play knowing that one bad hit can end a career, and above all the exultant glory of victory that inspires their struggle to be the best.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Bowden has another winner July 23, 2010
Michael J. Gordon (LA, USA)
This is a great read. Mark Bowden does a great job of bringing you up close with the famed Philly Eagles team that was touted to win it all. It's one of those books that keeps you interested and is hard to put down. Sports fan or not, this is a worth the time to get the behind the scenes story on a team that should have been a NFL dynasty.
 The NFL's "Breaks of the Game" August 31, 2009
David Okubo (Honolulu, HI)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Let me preface this review with a few things:
1. I am 21, and grew up in Hawaii, over 2,000 miles from the nearest NFL franchise. I grew up with no team allegiance, and barely followed the league at all. Come every February, even through high school, the teams in the Super Bowl were foreign to me.
2. I became a semi-dedicated Eagles fan over the past four years, while I was at school in Philadelphia, where it's hard to live without being infected by the city's fervor for and and obsession over their most prized team (despite the fact that the Phillies are now more of a winner). After a youth spent somehow avoiding profession sports fan-dom, I now follow everything except Nascar.
That being said, this was an excellent, borderline must-read book for those interested in the Eagles, those interested in the NFL, or those interested in professional sports, period. It does not surpass, but rather approaches, the golden standard of all sports writing, Halberstam's "Breaks of the Game."
Bowden captures an excellent vignette of the league and a team in a state of transition; furthermore, I'd go as far to say that he captures the neuroses of the modern professional athlete. From top to bottom, the Eagles during this season were a cast of varied and compelling characters, as Bowden admits in the afterword. From the spacey and self-consumed Cunningham to the angry and intense Joyner and Waters, to the jovial and comparably sane O-line. While some came from middle-class childhoods (in the case of Randall, a youth filled with fame), many came from dirt poor childhoods in the rural South -- Bowden does a good, comprehensive job of examining these player's stories and how they have shaped the men they are today. In the current day, with tortured characters like Michael Vick, Bringing the Heat illuminates the fundamentally different lives many of these men have lead from a conventional person, and Bowden pays careful attention to the consequences that the money they are awarded has on their lives and minds.
Perhaps most enlightening are Bowden's significant words about then-owner Norman Braman, who no doubt bears resemblance to many current owners with his meddlesome and uninformed opinions. A significant portion of the book is dedicated to Braman's and the Eagles' front office dealing with pending contract situations for many of the players, detailing the arcane and unfair pre-free agency system employed by the NFL -- and, in particular for tight end Keith Jackson and defensive end Reggie White, illustrating the beginnings of the NFL's true free agency era.
Even though I was 4 when this book was in the process of being written, I was thoroughly surprised and amused by many names that I recognized, like Mike Golic, now a radio host on ESPN Radio, and Buddy Ryan, father to (formerly Baltimore Ravens) Jets coach Rex Ryan, who seems to ape his father's defense-centric mindset.
Bowden is always mindful of the bigger picture of football in America, whether its the racial prejudices that influence the demographics at each position on the field, or the uneasy informal truce struck by those that play the game (coaches, players) and those that seek to capitalize on the game (owners, press). While in some cases, his analysis may seem obvious and unnecessary, often Bowden educates you on something you may never have suspected existed.
My minor complaints with this outstanding book:
- Simply put -- it's sprawling. Bowden rightly chose a season that seemed to have everything -- off-field tragedy, front office strife, a disconnect between the offensive and defensive teams, larger sweeping changes in the NFL -- and a team that seemed to have every type of personality. In his effort to catalogue everything, the book sometimes feels like it's lost focus, and you'll be stuck in some player's backstory forever. Bowden exaggerates this effect by bookending his story with the Eagles' first round playoff game against the Saints -- for me, even though I enjoyed the 20 or so chapters in between, it seemed like it took forever to find out what happened in the second half. It KILLED me.
- Unless you really want the Kindle edition, I suggest you avoid it. The picture section lacks contrast, and is probably much better in print, and, unlike some books that read in the Kindle's default text, this one is more of a scan quality. In one more memorable instance, an H somehow got bisected, with an entire line being dedicated to the first half of the H and the rest of the letter on the next line, with the rest of the sentence.
- Bowden's a much better writer than he lets on in this book. Somewhere along the line while writing this, he was infected with this weird disease that forced him to write colloquially, reverting into second-person at an alarming frequency while explaining the larger dynamics of American football and NFL culture. It doesn't detract from the reading experience, but I found it annoying and somewhat unnecessary.
A Superb Snapshot of A Team, And League, On the Verge of Enormous Change July 15, 2009
Benjamin E. Berman (Alexandria, VA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are many elements of Mark Bowden's superb book to admire: the wide-angle view of what makes a professional sports franchise; the detailed and completely fair portrayals of larger-than-life personalities who toiled on the field, on the sidelines, and in the management suites for the Philadelphia Eagles; and the sense of momentum that really brought me into the maelstorm that an NFL season turns into (and made me root for the Eagles even though I have never had any allegiance to them--I'm a Dolphins fan for life!).
But I think the best thing about this book is the way it produces a dazzling picture of the NFL right before it underwent the most profound change in its history: the arrival of widespread, unrestricted free agency and the end of dynasties (well, to some extent, ask New England about that one!). And no team in 1992 embodied the steps between the old and new ways of pro football than Philadelpha did. They had risen to very good heights under Buddy Ryan, yet Ryan's era ended with no playoff wins. They had one of the most dominating defenses in NFL history during the 1991 season, yet didn't make the playoffs that year in large part because star QB Randall Cunningham's knee was demolished in the season opener. And in the 1992 offseason, Pro Bowl DT Jerome Brown was killed in an auto accident. Jerome's death became a catalyst for his teammates to finally break through and reach the Super Bowl, alongside the knowledge that future Hall of Fame DE Reggie White (RIP) would not remain with the Eagles after the 1992 season--a point driven home when an Eagle player became a precedent-setting free agent early in the season and signed with Miami (honestly prevailing, I was thrilled to have TE Keith Jackson join my beloved 'Phins).
So this book is about a team that was very good. Yet it's also about a team that fell short and knew exactly what it meant to get that close without getting a cigar or a Vince Lombardi Trophy. This book doesn't note that during the years when the heart of the '92 Eagles were at their peak (1989-1992), four of the most dominant teams in NFL history were all from the NFC and all won Super Bowls. That would be beneath one of the best sports book I have ever read, a work that's funny and horrifying, focused and colorful, and a must-read for anyone who loves football in the present day--and knows how that game came to be. 5 stars/5 stars.
inside the pysche of the NFL... May 17, 2007
Kerry O. Burns
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mark Bowden(Killing Pablo, Blackhawk Down, Guests of the Ayatollaho)
writes a vivid portrayal of the 1992 season of the Philadelphia Eagles..
Bowden is always a reporter who digs and digs for the inside info...any football fan would love this book as it takes you inside the goings on of owner, coach and player....the 1992 season was an especially tumultous one for the Philadelphia Eagles..Buddy Ryan, Richie Kotite, owner Norman Braman, Randall Cunningham, Reggie White, Seth Joyner, Wes Hopkins..you find that the egos, relationships in the locker room and jealousies of the players sometimes override the will to win...
If loved Gang Green and Buddy's Boys, a must read. January 4, 2007
Xraydoc (Hagerstown, MD USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I grew up in Philly during the days of Buddy Ball. I loved that team and still remember it fondly as my favorite. This book is a great for a fan of the Eagles who wants the story inside the story. Who were these men and where did they come from? What is it like in a pro locker room. What were the coaching styles of Kotite and Ryan. Well written by the author of Blackhawk down. I have already bought the book for a friend as a gift.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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