The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever

From Publishers WeeklyGifford, the 78-year-old former star for the New York Giants and later an icon on Monday Night Football, tells the story of this much-chronicled game between his Giants and Johnny Unitas's Baltimore Colts from both his perspective and through interviews with teammates and opponents. Gifford decided to write this book after David Halberstam, a friend of Gifford's who had planned to write a book about the game, was killed in a 2007 car accident. Gifford's is a candid, insightful and entertaining look at the camaraderie and culture of the first great stirrings of the NFL, when professional football was a second-class sport in comparison to baseball. He describes vividly an era where the Giants players worked second jobs in the off-season, spent many fall nights barhopping their way across midtown Manhattan and often partook of cigarettes and beer in their Yankee Stadium locker room. Despite the title, this is less a book about how that 1958 game changed the NFL (which was covered in Mark Bowden's summer release of The Best Game Ever) than it is an enjoyable telling of the men who played it. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review“Frank Gifford’s superb memoir shows what it really takes and means to be a champion. Also, it’s nice to read about the Giants losing a title game.” (Bill Belichick ) “The NFL, as we know it today, began with the 1958 Championship. There’s nobody better to tell the story of that game and the guys who played it than Frank Gifford. This book, like those players, is All-Madden.” (John Madden )