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cbaker8887's review against another edition
4.0
This is undoubtedly one of the oddest biographies I have ever read. And one of the most intriguing.
Author Charles Pierce tries to uncover what makes Tom Brady tic. What makes him such a consummate team player and leader on the field? What made a player drafted in the sixth round, whom nobody but maybe Bill Belichick and Scott Piloli, thought would ever amount to much in the pros, become a Hall of Fame bound quarterback, one of the best to have ever played?
There are a lot of things.
First, Brady was never the most gifted athlete and he had to work for everything through high school and college. In fact, he was barely recruited and his father put together a video package and he ultimately ended up at the University of Michigan. He persevered despite not even being a full time starter, even as a senior, despite that he was a winner.
Second, in the pros his work ethic is infectious to his teammates. He is the first to arrive and the last to leave. His hard work put him in a position to take over for Drew Bledsoe when he was hurt during the 2001 regular season and progress. He became the team leader that despite his talents Beldsoe never really was.
Third, he is a team first player. He truly buys in to the Patriots' modern day credo, there is no "I" in team. He doesn't care about stats, he cares about wins. But that has propelled him to put up unbelievable stats.
And he his simply a nice person. He gives credit where credit is due. He doesn't do a lot of endorsements. And when he had the opportunity to do one for a credit card company he refused to do it unless his offensive linemen, his protectors, were involved. He wanted them to shine to.
Don't believe Tom Brady is a really good guy in a sport fraught with me first, selfish, athletes with an undertone of criminality? Read Charlie Weiss's book about his near death experience and how Brady helped him and his wife out in their time of greatest need. Read Tedy Bruschi's book that has a few anecdotes about what Brady's friendship means. Or simply read this book about to hear what his family, friends, and teammates have all said about his leadership skills. There is a reason his teammates and coaches have the utmost confidence in him.
The oddest aspect of this book is Brady himself did not participate in it and it really takes somewhat of a psychologist's approach at times in examining its subject. From the influence of his Catholic upbringing, the impact of his athletic older sisters who sometimes outshined him in his youth, to his perseverance in the face of sports adversity, you learn the inner workings of one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
This is a recommended read.
Author Charles Pierce tries to uncover what makes Tom Brady tic. What makes him such a consummate team player and leader on the field? What made a player drafted in the sixth round, whom nobody but maybe Bill Belichick and Scott Piloli, thought would ever amount to much in the pros, become a Hall of Fame bound quarterback, one of the best to have ever played?
There are a lot of things.
First, Brady was never the most gifted athlete and he had to work for everything through high school and college. In fact, he was barely recruited and his father put together a video package and he ultimately ended up at the University of Michigan. He persevered despite not even being a full time starter, even as a senior, despite that he was a winner.
Second, in the pros his work ethic is infectious to his teammates. He is the first to arrive and the last to leave. His hard work put him in a position to take over for Drew Bledsoe when he was hurt during the 2001 regular season and progress. He became the team leader that despite his talents Beldsoe never really was.
Third, he is a team first player. He truly buys in to the Patriots' modern day credo, there is no "I" in team. He doesn't care about stats, he cares about wins. But that has propelled him to put up unbelievable stats.
And he his simply a nice person. He gives credit where credit is due. He doesn't do a lot of endorsements. And when he had the opportunity to do one for a credit card company he refused to do it unless his offensive linemen, his protectors, were involved. He wanted them to shine to.
Don't believe Tom Brady is a really good guy in a sport fraught with me first, selfish, athletes with an undertone of criminality? Read Charlie Weiss's book about his near death experience and how Brady helped him and his wife out in their time of greatest need. Read Tedy Bruschi's book that has a few anecdotes about what Brady's friendship means. Or simply read this book about to hear what his family, friends, and teammates have all said about his leadership skills. There is a reason his teammates and coaches have the utmost confidence in him.
The oddest aspect of this book is Brady himself did not participate in it and it really takes somewhat of a psychologist's approach at times in examining its subject. From the influence of his Catholic upbringing, the impact of his athletic older sisters who sometimes outshined him in his youth, to his perseverance in the face of sports adversity, you learn the inner workings of one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
This is a recommended read.
heathercide's review against another edition
3.0
Ordered this off of Amazon on a whim because I have a strange Tom Brady obsession that refuses to die even in the midst of "Deflategate". It gave me a pretty decent background on him and some snippets of insights on him from family, teammates, coaches, etc (I was really interested in what Bill Belichick had to say, in particular), and it was well-written in parts, but a lot of times the author veered off talking about Brady to describe some person/event/game who is barely able to be connected back to him. For much of the book, the author seemed more concerned with using fancy language and dramatization to make every detail bigger than it really was, which really serves more to cheapen Brady's story than enhance it. At one point, he even brings in philosophy about loyalty, which while it seemed to fit, also sounded way too pompous for a sports biography. Overall, though, I did enjoy it; the documentation of his time at Michigan was particularly interesting, even having seen the Brady 6 a few times.
daybreak1012's review against another edition
3.0
Well, here's the thing. I've always appreciated what Brady has done for my team, but I've never been a huge fan of *him*. So, I thought I would learn a little about him and see if that would change my mind some. And it did. Taken with a grain of salt, he seems like a decent guy, for the most part. He certainly works hard, and I appreciate his attitude. That being said, this author did very little to engage a reader who is NOT a Patriots fan. In fact, if I were the fan of another team, I would have been turned off by the author more than anything else. There was a lot of slurping all over Brady and the Patriots, almost a tone of disdain, that even as a Patriots fan, I found a bit distasteful. (We won't even discuss how scornful he speaks of baseball, which didn't sit well with me.) The writing, itself, was ok-ish. Sometimes he over-explained references he made, other times he just assumed the reader knew who some obscure person was without a single descriptor or deeper identification. The other thing that I found a little disconcerting was the way the author told the "story" of the 2005 Patriots season, while linking each game or two to something in Brady's personal history. Some of these links were a stretch, at best, and some were just downright jolting in the jumps back and forth through time. Overall, I'd give Tom's story a solid four stars, but this author's failure to be objective through most of the book, combined with the way he chose to tell Tom's story, are what I rated a generous three.
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