The GM: The Inside Story of a Dream Job and the Nightmares that Go with It by Tom Callahan Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The GM: The Inside Story of a Dream Job and the Nightmares that Go with It
Book Review: A Little Misleading
Summary: 3 Stars
By no means is this a bad book. It's actually a very well written book, however the title is misleading. This is not a book about the inner working of a general manger, but rather a recap of the '06 Giants season and some stories about the life of Ernie Accorsi. A must read for Giants fans as it gives some nice insight about many of the Giants higher profile players. NFL fans just looking for a good book about football should just wait for the paperback and enjoy the short and easy read. People looking for a book about the inner workings of a general manger, need not apply. Book Review: Fails to deliver on everything it promises
Summary: 1 Stars
A near-complete waste of time. It's the one thing that books of this sort, for better or worse, never are: a dull read. The biggest surprise was how it is padded by reproducing drive charts from various football games, mostly of the season in question, with occasional annotations. The whole point of prose is to bring games to life, but Callahan somehow found a way to suck the blood right out of them.
Supposedly, Callahan spent a year with this team. He had an office on the premises, he had access to staff and to players. It does not show, not even a little bit. There are a whole bunch of "a year in the life" type books from the last few years that go for the same thing, where the time spent by the author jumps out of the pages: Next Man Up, Patriot Reign, The Blind Side, The Education of a Coach, The Draft, and Moneyball, a book so good it doesn't lose any points for not being about football.
Accorsi comes off as a bit of a rube in this book; the reader has no insight into what qualities he has that got him into this profession as opposed to being, say, an insurance salesman. There are some interesting anecdotes, but most of the stories come across as name dropping. The stories have the feel of the kind of stuff you hear over a beer or two in a bar with someone you don't really know. There's zero depth, and zero insight. Nowhere in the book do we get taken through the process of any decision making process, except one little mantra that he repeats about fifteen times: "if a kid was ever a good kid, he can be a good kid again, but if he was never a good kid, don't waste your time." Wow. Words to live by.
Of the many, many, sins of omission, the worst in my view is this: he was the GM in Cleveland for two years with Bill Belichick as his coach, and that whole experience gets maybe two and a half paragraphs. One of the greatest coaches ever, in a role where basically he failed, and to Callahan it's not worth even a whole page.
The book is a travesty. Ernie Accorsi by all accounts (except Callahan's) is one of the true class acts of the NFL, and while he's not one of the giants of the league, he is a bona fide part of NFL history. He deserved much better than this.
Book Review: disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
You get no insight into the daily life of a NFL GM. According to this book, the only thing Ernie Accorsi did during his last season was pack up his belongings and watch the games from the tunnel under the stadium.
A couple of decent stories from Accorsi's past are the only thing saving it from a one star ranking.
Book Review: GM
Summary: 5 Stars
Good price,fast and easy delivery. The easiest way to purchase an item.
the book is an easy read into the world behind pro football.
Book Review: Love the Giants, sort of liked this book
Summary: 3 Stars
My obsession for all things New York Giants is the only motivation I had to continue through this book. Knowing that juicy nuggets of information were buried in the pages ahead was what kept me going. Because, in my opinion, the writing was horrific. I do not know who Tom Callahan is, but he is probably the on of the worst writers I've ever read. Or perhaps his copyeditor is to blame. I've never seen anyone use prepositions so haphazardly, that they leave you scratching your head. Also, many passages in the book lack coherency. He will just jump from one subject to another with no apparent reason. I found this incredibly frustrating, as I searched for "why," and there was no answer. There were some other glaring factual errors, for instance, fullback Jim Finn went to Bergen Catholic HS in New Jersey, not "Burton Catholic." There is no such thing as Burton Catholic, it is not as if the two were confused.
Anyway, I still recommend purchasing this if you are a Giants fan. You will find incredible stories about Parcells, Tiki, Eli, Wellington Mara, Coughlin, Plaxico, Shockey, Reese, Fassel, Toomer, and more. Information that sports media outlets like ESPN cannot hope to report in their wildest dreams. This is the inside story from an inside man.
So, my final thought is it is worth the read, you will learn a ton of interesting things, learn more about the character of certain players and management, but bring a couple of Advils with you as the writing style will give you a headache.