“The definitive book of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers” (Scott Brown, ESPN), Their Life’s Work is a triumphant yet intimate literary sports book that—through exquisite reportage, love, and honesty—tells the full story of the best team to ever play the game.
The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s won an unprecedented and unmatched four Super Bowls in six years. A dozen of those Steelers players, coaches, and executives have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, and three decades later their names echo in popular memory: “Mean” Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mike Webster, Jack Lambert, Lynn Swann, and John Stallworth. In ways exhilarating and heartbreaking, they define not only the brotherhood of sports but those elements of the game that engage tens of millions of Americans: its artistry and its brutality.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Their Life’s Work is a richly textured story of a team and a sport, what the game gave these men, and what the game took. It gave fame, wealth, and, above all, a brotherhood of players, twelve of whom died before turning sixty. To a man, they said they’d do it again, all of it. They bared the soul of the game to Gary Pomerantz, and he captured it wondrously. “Here is a book as hard-hitting and powerful as the ‘Steel Curtain’ dynasty that Pomerantz depicts so deftly. It’s the NFL’s version of The Boys of Summer, with equal parts triumph and melancholy. Pomerantz’s writing is strong, straightforward, funny, sentimental, and blunt. It’s as working class and gritty as the men he writes about” (The Tampa Tribune, Top 10 Sports Books of the Year).
ISBN-13: 9781451691634
Media Type: Paperback(Reprint)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 10-21-2014
Pages: 480
Product Dimensions: 8.30(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.20(d)
Gary M. Pomerantz is a nonfiction author and journalist and has served the past seven years as a visiting lecturer in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Pomerantz has written four books, including Their Life’s Work and the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn.
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Their Life’s Work
Table of Contents
I Introduction: Reverie & Reality 3
II When the Chief Was Young
1 The Chief at the Racetracks, 1937 23
III Assembling the Pieces
2 The Rooneys 35
3 The Man from the Courier 47
4 Noll & Mean Joe 58
5 The Rock & the Frenchman 75
6 Immaculate 83
IV An Empire Born, 1974
7 In the Film Room 105
8 The 1974 Draft 109
9 Quarterback Controversy: Brad, Rat, or Joe Gillie? 119
10 The Steel Curtain 138
11 Stall & Webby 150
12 1974 AFC Title Game 159
13 Super Bowl IX 171
V Steel Empire
14 Days of Empire: 1975-1981 187
VI Their Life's Work
15 Bar Scene at Pro Bowl, 1982 231
16 Mean Joe 234
17 Brad 252
18 Franco 270
19 Stall 287
20 Webby 300
21 The Rooneys 325
VII Empire in Twilight
22 It's Still Their Town 343
23 The Legacy Haunted 353
24 Noll & the Ambassador 370
25 The Sauna, Once More 377
Postscripts: Mortal Immortals 381
Acknowledgments 385
Notes 389
Bibliography 443
Index 449
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