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Summary: A must read for ALL college football fans!!
Review: Unlike other books written about Coach Bryant, this book gives not just facts, but the stories behind the Man. I laughed out loud many times at some of the anecdotes involving the players and the comments that Coach Bryant would make. I have to confess, I teared up a few times, too. Jim Dent is such a good storyteller that if you appreciate college football at all, you will love this book. Don't underestimate this book - it almost turned me into an Aggie fan!!
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Summary: Great Book--- I really couldn't put it down.
Review: This book was one of the best sports books I have ever read and found it hard to put it down until I finished. I am not an Aggie either.
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Summary: A great book for all Aggies everywhere
Review: This book is an excellent recollection of TAMU football during the early 1950's. Every Aggie should read this book. As an Aggie who graduated recently, it makes me appreciate the history of TAMU.
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Summary: Legendary Coach Builds Champion Against All Odds
Review: What would you do if someone forced you to practice football for hours upon end in the oven heat of Central Texas? I forgot to mention you get no water breaks...and by the way, the Coach at times seems like a lunatic, not caring whether or not his players get hurt or even survive. 35 men survived this barbarian type of football boot camp, their story comes alive in "The Junction Boys." You grow to care, not only about the players, but about the coach, in this case, the legendary Bear Bryant. On the surface, the trip to Junction seems like downright torture. It's what happens after the camp that makes this book so magical. You see players come together as a team, a special bond develops with the coach as they turn from a rag-tag bunch into conference champs all in the manner of two years. This is a must read for sports fans, it gives a special insight into the aura of Bear Bryant and the men who would run through brick walls for him.
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Summary: We think that Jim Dent is a wonderful writer..one of a kind
Review: The book is stimulating.. Jim Dent is a one of a kind author..his previous writings have been brilliant. He is a legend in his own time. His Texas roots from S.M.U. have provided insights in Texas football like no other.
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Summary: Texas Aggie Magazine Praises THE JUNCTION BOYS
Review: "Some legends are best left alone, but this one only gets better in the telling. Jim Dent's hundreds of interviews (starting with conversations he had with Gene Stallings '57 while covering the Dallas Cowboys in the 1980s) brings this era to life and fleshes out the story with detailed background on each player. It's got humor and near tragedy, hope and despair, disappointment and the exultation of winning. You'll want to laugh, you might even want to cry, but you'll know what legends are made of by the time you finish this book. Thanks, Jim Dent, for turning a bit of history into a readable, entertaining and enlightening story. They'll be talking about this book for a long time." - Texas Aggie Magazine
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Summary: Outstanding Praise for THE JUNCTION BOYS
Review: "I heard the story of the Junction Boys from Gene Stallings when he was on my staff with the Cowboys. These guys were some of the toughest to ever play the game. Jim Dent has really brought the story to life in a book any football fan would like to read."-- Tom Landry"Jim Dent has written a terrific book about a time when college football players cared a great deal more about current Saturdays than they did about future Sundays. A Bear Bryant could instill that kind of thinking." - Dan Jenkins, author Semi-Tough and Dead Solid Perfect "One of the most memorable sports book that I've ever read and I've read alot, in fact, it's the best sports book I've ever read." - Pat Summerall, Fox Sports "The Junction Boys is a powerful book about a transcendent moment in the history of American sports. Jim Dent's skillful use of dialog brings Bear Bryant and his rugged band of survivors to life in vivid detail, making you feel their desperation to prove something fundamental and universal about themselves. The Junction Boys reads with the pace of page-turning fiction." -Keith Dunnavant, author of Coach: The Life of Paul 'Bear' Bryant, and Time-Out; A Sports Fan's Dream Year "Bear Bryant, the greatest coach in the history of college football, was a mythic figure, and Jim Dent, who has written a moving, highly entertaining book, is his Homer. Yes, it's about football, but it's also about growing up poor in Texas, and the role football plays in boys' lives, and about the seeds of greatness and what it takes to be a winner and a hell of a lot more. Dang, I loved this book." -- Peter Golenbock "A wonderfully nostalgic visit to another time and place in the history of college football, The Junction Boys is destined to become a bright and shining gem in the literature of sport."-- Carlton Stowers, author of the Edgar Award-winning To The Last Breath "From high school to the pros, the history of football in Texas is steeped in tall tales and tall deeds. But even fifty years later, absolutely nothing matches the legendary status of those ten days in Junction. Amazing stuff. I loved this book." -- Randy Galloway, Fort Worth Star-Telegram "The story of the Junction Boys remains one of the legendary stories in Texas football history. Jim Dent has brought the story to life in an intriguing style." --Blackie Sherrod, The Dallas Morning News "Dent has captured the unique spirit and color of a college football season on the brink of Hell. Great reading." - Mickey Herskowitz, The Houston Chronicle
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Summary: Outstanding Praise for THE JUNCTION BOYS
Review: This is the story of a remarkable team - and the beginning of the legend. In August of fifty-four, the town of Junction was a flyspeck on the map of Texas. The Texas Hill Country was in the grip of a five-year drought that had fried most of central and West Texas. On a day late in the month, two Greyhound buses weaved through a twisting and narrow two-lane highway. The Texas A&M football team aboard, 111 strong, would soon arrive in a tiny town with no stoplights, one service station, and precious little else; just outside town, they would find an unforgiving patch of land littered with spartan Quonset huts, rocks, sandspurs, cactus, yellow dust and gnarled mesquite trees. As Texas suffered from the devastating drought, so to did Texas A&M football suffer from a drought of heart and talent. To the rescue came Bear Bryant, already a legend in the making, who was in no mood for a picnic. It was in Junction that he would make his stand, and it was here that he would drive home an extreme brand of blood-and-thunder discipline. In a calculated move that many consider the salvation of Texas A&M football, Bryant put his players through the most grueling workouts ever imagined. Beneath a broiling Texas sun, practicing on a drought-scorched field, only a handful would survive the ten-day Aggie Death Camp. The ones who braved the torch-like heat and the burning passion of their coach helped turn a floundering team into one of the nation's best. The Junction Boys recounts this training camp and the rebuilding program that culminated in an undefeated season just three years later. But this is more than just a story of tough practices without water breaks. An extraordinary fellowship was forged from the mind-numbing pain. The thirty-five survivors bonded together like no other team in America. They profited from the Junction experience; the knowledge they took back with them to College Station, about themselves and what they were capable of, would be used for the rest of their lives. Among the Junction survivors who would have a powerful influence on the game of football were Gene Stallings and Jack Pardee. In vivid and powerful images reminiscent of Friday Night Lights, Hoosiers, and The Last Picture Show, these young men and their driven coach come to life. The Junction Boys contains all the hallmarks of a classic sports story, and it combines America's love of college football with an extraordinary story of perseverance and triumph.
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Summary: Incredible
Review: This book chronicles the early days of Coach Bear Bryant at Texas A&M. Coach Bryant is well known as the leader of Alabama and some of the great players that went through his system. Before his days in Alabama, Bryant spend a few years at Texas A&M and turns that program around.
Coach Bryant walks into a football program the is run by the Alumni regarding who is on the team, and playing. Coach Bryant changes that and takes control of the team. To find out who are the real players on the team, Coach Bryant takes them to a training camp in Junction, Texas. A small hole in the wall hit hard by the drought in Texas.
The conditions are terrible. Extreme heat, a practice field with more stones and rocks than grass, and a coach driven to find a team amongst the 115 players that are taken to Junction.
What happens at Junction has now gone down as lengedary. Coach Bryant does everything to whip the players into a 'team'. After the ten days at camp are over, the single bus carries the remaining 35 players back to school. The names of some of these players is also interesting (Gene Stallings, etc).
Some of what the players are made to do will seems harsh. Keep in mind that it was a different time in 1954. This is one of my favorite sports books to date.
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Summary: OK...
Review: I thought that this book was better than the movie. I saw the movie and was very disappointed. If you guys want a good SEC Book try "A Tailgater's Guide To SEC Football". I liked it. Junction Boys is okay, I just thought it would be much better.
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