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Summary: This ex-Clevelander loved Dan McGraw's book
Review: I must admit being prejudice about this book. This book was written for me.I grew up in Cleveland in the 70's and 80's and was a big Cleveland Brown's fan. I actually attended the last Championship game a professional Cleveland team won...the 1963 NFL title game. So, I understand the pain Clevelander's have experienced for the past 40 years. McGraw moves back to Cleveland to spend time with his Father who is dying and to cover the first year experience of the "new" Browns. It sounds like a smaltzy experience, but it is anything but. The power of the book is the complete honesty that McGraw relates about his Dad and himself. There is no sugar coating of the "good and bad" about their character and their relationship. McGraw also gives an accurate description of how Cleveland has been homogenized into "any town" USA and gives a feel for today's predictable NFL machine. I'm one of those "don't care about the new Browns" type. I would love to sit down and have a beer with Dan in one of those old crappy Cleveland bars.
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Summary: Not Tuesday's With Morrie
Review: I read Albom's Tuesday's With Morrie and felt I had just read a book based on fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant. Be kind to others; stop and smell the roses. This book is much more complex, much more real, and much more enjoyable. When Dan McGraw wries about his father, he does so with a loving eye, but also with the knowledge of the faults his father had. This book is the only book I have read about fathers and sons that is not so sappy as to make you gag. So honest, I felt uncomfortable reading it at time. Kudos to Dan McGraw for doing a book that is so different from the rest of the genre.
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Summary: From Brockaw to McGraw
Review: In Tom Brockaw's Greatest Generation he details the personal accomplishments of the World War II generation. In Dan McGraw's First and Last Seasons one of their progeny reflects on their role as parents. Not surprisingly, you wouldn't find WW II vets sipping chardonnay, or sitting about a campfire connecting with their inner self and their offspring. These stoic, hardworking folks never read self help books, and their favored form of communication was action: they led by example. At its worst this might include racism, sexism, homophobia, and alcoholism. And perhaps, at its best, there were the shared thrills and disappointments of professional football. Alternating dark/ brooding and hilariously funny this is a wonderful memoir for those middle-aged offspring of that epoch. Ultimately Mr. McGraw is enlightened by the fact that, like himself (ourselves), the Greatest Generation at least tried to be at their best as parents. As a kid, you can't really ask or expect anything more.
Rating:
Summary: From Brockaw to McGraw
Review: In Tom Brockaw's Greatest Generation he details the personal accomplishments of the World War II generation. In Dan McGraw's First and Last Seasons one of their progeny reflects on their role as parents. Not surprisingly, you wouldn't find WW II vets sipping chardonnay, or sitting about a campfire connecting with their inner self and their offspring. These stoic, hardworking folks never read self help books, and their favored form of communication was action: they led by example. At its worst this might include racism, sexism, homophobia, and alcoholism. And perhaps, at its best, there were the shared thrills and disappointments of professional football. Alternating dark/ brooding and hilariously funny this is a wonderful memoir for those middle-aged offspring of that epoch. Ultimately Mr. McGraw is enlightened by the fact that, like himself (ourselves), the Greatest Generation at least tried to be at their best as parents. As a kid, you can't really ask or expect anything more.
Rating: 
Summary: Like life that it describes, the book is a little messy
Review: The book was supposed to be about the author spending the first season of the Brown's with his dying father. But like so many things in life it does not go exactly as planned and the father dies after the first preseason game. The author improvises a little and does backwards looks at his relationship with his father. He also examines the strange relationship between a town and its team. The town pays for the stadium to bring the Brown's back, but it is not really a team of the common Clevelander, which is probably true of most of the NFL. While these are the two main topics (the author's relationship with his father and the new Browns) the author bounces around on other topics such as his own drinking issues and race relations in America (or at least Cleveland). In almost every topic he touches he shows how life is almost more complicated and messy that it seems it should be. Overall, a good read for football fans.
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Summary: a great book about a father and a son, and funny too.
Review: This is kind of the anti-Morrie. Nothing against that book, but this is not a warm and fuzzy kind of story. It's very unsentimental, and more effective because of that. IF you're not into honesty, don't read this--it's easily the most honest look at a father-son relationship I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. So many American men and their fathers have a curiously aloof relationship, often based on doing things together instead of talking and sharing feelings . . . and sports is often one of those activities. I think almost every guy in America will identify with Dan McGraw and his memorable and terminally ill dad, who, when his son tells him he's writing a book about the two of them, asks, "When would it be good for me to die? You know, for the book?" The process of McGraw making peace with his father, with the "expansion" Cleveland Browns' season in the background, is by turns awkward, painful, corrosively funny (there's no shortage of drinking and profanity here), and beautiful. The elder McGraw is simply one of the most unforgettable characters I've ever read about. I just can't recommend this book highly.
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Summary: McGraw running away from the truth
Review: While I applaud the author's honesty, I am saddened by his unnwillingness to grow and change from this experience. For all his just-as-I-am bravada, Mr. McGraw, in the end, seems destined to drink away his life as a means of running away from himself. I found it fascinating -- and a tad pathetic -- that he writes with such confidence about his so-called life. But like his drinking, it's obviously just a way of ignoring the truth. His "drink a beer and do it again" life has that swashbuckling feel of life lived boldly. But it's really a selfish life. And I can't help but wonder when he's going to grow up, look in the mirror and ask himself: Is this how I want my daughter to remember me when I'm gone? When she writes her book on me? I can't remember when I've read a book that offered so little hope or inspiration.
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