Download The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation AudioBook Free
Sally Jenkins, bestselling co-author of It's Not About the Bike, revives a forgotten little bit of history in The Real All Americans. In doing so, she has crafted a inspirational story about a Native American football team that is really as much about football as Lance Armstrong's book was about a bike.
If you’d reckon that Yale or Harvard ruled the college gridiron in 1911 and 1912, you’d be wrong. The most popular team belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story commences with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle’s first students.
Years later, three students approached Pratt with the idea of forming a football team. Pratt liked the theory, and in less than twenty years the Carlisle football team was defeating their Ivy League opponents and along the way changing what sort of game was played.
Sally Jenkins gives this story of unlikely champions a breathtaking immediacy. We see the legendary Jim Thorpe kicking an absolute field goal, watch an injured Dwight D. Eisenhower limping off of the field, and follow the glorious rise of Coach Glenn “Pop” Warner as well as his unexpected fall from grace.
The Real All Americans is about the end of the culture and the birth of a casino game that has thrilled Americans for generations. It really is an inspiring reminder of the extraordinary things that can be achieved when we set aside our differences and embrace a standard purpose.
