Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever

Rating:
Summary: Best book I've ever read on pro football in its golden age.
Review: Bronko Nagurski's comeback with the Chicago Bears in 1943 is just one of the greatest sports stories ever--reading the chapter in which he wins the final regular-season game for them to get into the championship game gave me goosebumps, I swear to God. But I also loved the wonderful atmosphere of the period Dent evokes here, and the many colorful characters--even Al Capone plays a part.

If you've ever read the great Junction Boys, you know what a wonderful writer Jim Dent is. This is his best since that book. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great in my view
Review: I am a long time member of PFRA (Professional Football Researchers Association), and have read (on microfilm) the actual Chicago Tribune newspaper stories of all the games covered in this book. My sense from reading these is that Bronko Nagurski was not treated in his own time as the legendary player he has since become. For example, I don't recall in my reading of the newspapers any accounts of Nagurski carrying the ball on 19 of 21 plays (or some such) as is reported in this book, though of course the newspapers didn't report every game detail. Nagurski's season and career stats also don't necessarily support that he was the dominant runner usually depicted. His career stats indicate he carried the ball on average less than ten times per game, and in 1931, for example, this book itself states that teammate Red Grange outrushed him 599 yards to 401 (not counting one game with incomplete stats). To me these facts call into question the "Bronko as Superman" thesis.

A lack for me in the book is, though the book does include some statistics, it does not summarize Nagurski's career statistics anywhere. Personally, as a reasearcher, I would have liked to have seen Bronko's career summarized game-by-game in an easy to retrieve format; in effect, a more scholarly book.

On the other hand, this book includes much personal interest information not usually found in newspaper stories, but I would have preferred that the author not use so much "salty language" in quoting players to report this info. Perhaps this is realistic reportage, but I feel it makes the book unsuitable for young people, particularly if we are trying to teach the sportsmanship much lacking today. I am also dubious that the many direct quotes in the book were all actually spoken.

I also didn't like the author's habit of jumping around in chronology, even within the same season, as it made the sequence of events often hard to follow. And though the author clearly has done more research than is usual for books of this type, I still picked up on the ocassional questionable statement. For example, the author states that Red Grange ran 94 yards on the second play of the 1924 Illinois-Michigan game whereas every other source I've read says Red returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. (Interestingly, the book spends quite a lot of space on Red Grange. Since I am interested in Red's career, I often found this the most useful part of the book!)

In sum, if you like personal interest stories from the early days of pro football, you will undoubtedly like this book; if you are primarily interested in facts and statistics, as I am, you my be somewhat disappointed, as I was.

Rating:
Summary: When Football Player Were Toughest
Review: Jim Dent tells the story of Bronko Nagurski's football career. "Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever" is not a biography. It is about a football player and why he became among the greatest players ever, with special emphasis on one season (1943). Dent, however, can't help but to provide the background of Nagurski's early life.

Bronko Nagurski was the Babe Ruth of football. No one was greater, more dominant, more powerful at their sport than Nagurski. Others have played well: We all know about Michael Jordan, Mickey Mantle, and Lance Armstrong, but few have embodied the essence of their sport with such successful excellence. I should mention Muhammad Ali. He often bragged he was the greatest, and he was.

Someone needs to make a movie of this story. Bronko began the Hollywood/Horatio Alger as a hardworking, not too complicated future football hero. He had heart and the physical strength size to back it up. Good true football movies are sparse. There's "Rudy" and "Brian's Song," but that's it. A Bronko Nagurski story could add to this short list.

Most of the book reads like a docudrama, utilizing storytelling techniques rarely found in sports books.

If I were a high school football coach, I would have my players read this book. Bronko Nagurski played the game before the lights shone brightly on the pocketbooks, when the swagger and dance of endzone celebrations were still years away, and the game was still played by big, tough men not pretty enough for white-toothed smiling products endorsements. Nagurski was the kind of player the NFL needs today.

I fully recommend "Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever" by Jim Dent.

Anthony Trendl

Rating:
Summary: When Football Player Were Toughest
Review: Jim Dent tells the story of Bronko Nagurski's football career. "Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever" is not a biography. It is about a football player and why he became among the greatest players ever, with special emphasis on one season (1943). Dent, however, can't help but to provide the background of Nagurski's early life.

Bronko Nagurski was the Babe Ruth of football. No one was greater, more dominant, more powerful at their sport than Nagurski. Others have played well: We all know about Michael Jordan, Mickey Mantle, and Lance Armstrong, but few have embodied the essence of their sport with such successful excellence. I should mention Muhammad Ali. He often bragged he was the greatest, and he was.

Someone needs to make a movie of this story. Bronko began the Hollywood/Horatio Alger as a hardworking, not too complicated future football hero. He had heart and the physical strength size to back it up. Good true football movies are sparse. There's "Rudy" and "Brian's Song," but that's it. A Bronko Nagurski story could add to this short list.

Most of the book reads like a docudrama, utilizing storytelling techniques rarely found in sports books.

If I were a high school football coach, I would have my players read this book. Bronko Nagurski played the game before the lights shone brightly on the pocketbooks, when the swagger and dance of endzone celebrations were still years away, and the game was still played by big, tough men not pretty enough for white-toothed smiling products endorsements. Nagurski was the kind of player the NFL needs today.

I fully recommend "Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever" by Jim Dent.

Anthony Trendl

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointed
Review: Jim Dent's Monster of the Midway is less a biography of Bronko Nagurski, and more of a historical look at the era in which Nagurski dominated the National Football League.

If you are a sports fan, you may enjoy this book; if you are an NFL fan you will love learning about the story of one of the league's most endearing names and a charter member of the pro football hall of fame. If you are a sports history afficianado like myself, you will enjoy the stories Dent has to tell and appreciate the way he makes this book read like a novel at times. In some ways I even feel this book will translate well to a television movie -- like the Junction Boys.

It took me about two weeks to finish this book which is my average pace of about one chapter per night. Where Jim Dent fails to deliver to the reader is an inside look at the life of Bronko Nagurski. After completing this book, I did not feel as if I had spent those two weeks with Bronko himself, rather, I felt I had just spent the entire time watching old films of the Bears against the Packers and reading old newspaper clips from the Chicago Tribune.

Jim Dent is a good writer, but I would not put his Monster of the Midway in the same league as Jane Leavy's biography of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy -- one of my favorite sports books. Leavy's work made me feel as if I had spent a September evening at Dodger Stadium sitting next to Sandy Koufax reliving his glory days. I did not get that type of feeling when I read Monster of the Midway.

Perhaps this is an unfair comparison. Part of the problem that Dent may have faced, primarily is that Nagurski is no longer with us, but also, there probably was not a whole lot said or heard about Nagurski for him to work with. The National Football League at the time was in it's infancy and nowhere near the media monster that it is today, or what Baseball was in the 1960's for that matter.

Regardless, I added this book to my collection because it is a good book. As a football fan, and a Bears fan in particular, I enjoyed this book and will cherish what I learned.


Rating:
Summary: a disappointment but still interesting
Review: junction boys was great. the undefeated was very good. monster of the midway doesn't even compare to those books. dent shows a shaky grasp of history that will irritate any true sports afficianado. chicago fans were not enraptured with hack wilson at the expense of bronko nagurski in 1935. hack was well on his way to alcoholic oblivion by then and hadn't played for the cubs since 1931. that is just the most glaring example, and it makes you doubt everything else. it does not make the early days of the nfl truly come alive, certainly not like the experience of bear bryant's texas a&m team at junction in 1954. but bronko nagurski and those great bears teams deserve a book. the literature of pro football is so woefully behind that of baseball, and this book is at least an attempt to put a dent in that situation (no pun intended).

Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing Midway
Review: On the strength of Jim Dent's other books, I preordered "Monster Of The Midway". The story of Bronko Nagurski, the early years of the Chicago Bears and the NFL is fascinating. However the book is much more. Dent's exhaustive research is evident. He has artfully woven the Nagurski story with a lot of the history and characters of the day. The birth of the NFL, George Halas, prohibition, Al Capone, gambling, the depression, Red Grange, college football and much more are included. Each page creates vivid word pictures that take you back in time and let you experience places like International Falls, Minnesota and Wrigley Field of old as you become acquainted with legends, their incredible stories and a captivating portion of upper Midwest history. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A Study of Idealized American Masculinity
Review: Readers looking for objective history here will be disappointed. Dent is not interested in presenting a critical biography of a public figure. Rather, *Monster of the Midway* is hero worship in its grandest form. Bronko Nagurski is depicted as the toughest man in a world of tough men. Even when hobbled with arthritis in his mid-30s, Nagurski is shown as a intimidating, powerful football player capable of dominating younger, better-conditioned men through sheer force of will.

Dent's use of voice in this book adds to both its realism and its characterization of Nagurski and his cohorts. The author's voice is very formal, disdaining the casual language often found in sports biographies. On the other hand, when quoting football men, Dent uses the gruff, unpretentious, occasionally crude dialect that we usually associate with aggressive, masculine athletes. The contrast here is effective. Dent does not try to be "one of the guys", and his implied acknowledgement of the distinction between authors and football players is refreshing.

Dent also makes good use of liberal tropes in presenting Nagurski and his Bears as heroic figures. The Bears' 1943 quarterback, Sid Luckman, endured disgusting Anti-Semitic epithets from both opposing fans and players. Dent shows Nagurski and the other Bears exacting retribution for these taunts, with Nagurski himself facing down a bench full of Anti-Semitic spectators in Henry Ford-era Detroit. Their fight against bigotry adds a moral thread to Dent's heroic portrayal of Nagurski's Bears, and it plays well here.

Through all this idealization, Dent is never overtly dishonest. He quotes Nagurski as brushing off the more grandiose tales of his prowess, including his shattering of Wrigley Field's brick wall and giving directions in rural Minnesota by pointing with his plow instead of his finger. According to Nagurski, the only thing anyone ever saw him plow was the defensive line. Through all the adulation, one gets the sense that Dent's superhero is not too far removed from the real Bronko after all.

Rating:
Summary: Pro Football During the 30's and Early 40's
Review: The name Bronko Nagurski. You know this man was not a ballet dancer. This is more than a book about "The Nag" and the Chicago Bears. It is also a book about a number of other old football names I have heard of, but knew nothing about. Sid Luckman, Hunk Anderson, Don Hutson, Johnny "Blood" McNally, Clyde "Bulldog" Turner, Beattie Feathers, George Preston Marshall, Curly Lambeau, Slingin' Sammy Baugh, and, of course, the Papa Bear himself, George Halas. This was a period of players playing both on offense and defense, no hash marks, the fat ball, the quarterback being fair game until a play is blown dead by an official, and other rules that had not been placed into the game. George Preston Marshall, owner of the then Boston Redskins who played in Fenway Park, spoke to the conservative owners about the need to change some rules to jazz up the game to make it more exciting to the public. He was lucky to have a sympathetic listener in George Halas as support for his ideas. The demise of the fat ball made it possible to throw more passes, and put an end to the endless amount of running plays. One of Marshall's best ideas was to split the league into two conferences, and setting up a championship game each year. For all his good ideas, he stated he wanted Negroes out of the game. Black players had been part of the game since 1920, but Marshall's appeal banned black players from further play. Bronko Nagurski played for the Bears throughout the 1937 season, and left the team over a difference of $500 that The Nag and Halas differed over. Nagurski made money wrestling, and eventually came back to play for the Bears during the 1943 season. What surprised me was the number of college coaches such as Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne who discouraged college players from entering the professional ranks. In 1990 Nagurski traveled to the Mayo Clinic to fuse bones in his ankles. A doctor asked for an autograph for his son, and The Nag wrote, "To Jeremy--Do Not Play Football. Bronko Nagurski." This is a book filled with colorful anecdotes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Pro Football During the 30's and Early 40's
Review: The name Bronko Nagurski. You know this man was not a ballet dancer. This is more than a book about "The Nag" and the Chicago Bears. It is also a book about a number of other old football names I have heard of, but knew nothing about. Sid Luckman, Hunk Anderson, Don Hutson, Johnny "Blood" McNally, Clyde "Bulldog" Turner, Beattie Feathers, George Preston Marshall, Curly Lambeau, Slingin' Sammy Baugh, and, of course, the Papa Bear himself, George Halas. This was a period of players playing both on offense and defense, no hash marks, the fat ball, the quarterback being fair game until a play is blown dead by an official, and other rules that had not been placed into the game. George Preston Marshall, owner of the then Boston Redskins who played in Fenway Park, spoke to the conservative owners about the need to change some rules to jazz up the game to make it more exciting to the public. He was lucky to have a sympathetic listener in George Halas as support for his ideas. The demise of the fat ball made it possible to throw more passes, and put an end to the endless amount of running plays. One of Marshall's best ideas was to split the league into two conferences, and setting up a championship game each year. For all his good ideas, he stated he wanted Negroes out of the game. Black players had been part of the game since 1920, but Marshall's appeal banned black players from further play. Bronko Nagurski played for the Bears throughout the 1937 season, and left the team over a difference of $500 that The Nag and Halas differed over. Nagurski made money wrestling, and eventually came back to play for the Bears during the 1943 season. What surprised me was the number of college coaches such as Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne who discouraged college players from entering the professional ranks. In 1990 Nagurski traveled to the Mayo Clinic to fuse bones in his ankles. A doctor asked for an autograph for his son, and The Nag wrote, "To Jeremy--Do Not Play Football. Bronko Nagurski." This is a book filled with colorful anecdotes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.