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Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports | 
 enlarge | Author: John M. Barry
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $3.98
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 1179136
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 214
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 157806404X
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.30973
EAN: 9781578064045
ASIN: 157806404X
Publication Date: October 2001
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Condition: New/New; BRAND NEW, NOT A REMAINDER, NO SPINE CREASES. Bright, Clean, & Crisp. GIFT QUALITY. GREAT BUY.FAST SHIPPING & FREE USPS DELIVERY CONFIRMATION
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Book Description
The Washington Post has said that the work of John M. Barry, author of the award-winning Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, has "the potential to change the way we think." Now in his new book, Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports, Barry once again makes us see the world differently, as he examines power from different and striking angles. Barry tells the compelling inside story of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's rise to power, and the subsequent fall of Speaker Jim Wright. Vice President Dick Cheney, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, and House Democratic whip David Bonior all play major roles in this story. Barry, a former Washington journalist who has written for the New York Times and the Washington Post, offers a deep and original analysis of the media as well, providing a provocative view of its inner workings and of the pressures on journalists and on all those who compete. But Barry also sees power in broader terms. In chapters that range from the isolating triumphs of world record-holding hurdler Renaldo Nehemiah, to the raw physical might of an Olympic weightlifter, to the weight of a culture bearing down upon a young man sent to Vietnam, Barry looks at individuals struggling against both the world and themselves. Based on his own experiences as a major college football coach, he also profiles players he coached who pursued their dreams of succeeding in the National Football League. His is an uncommon perspective on sport and on the price of winning and losing.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Fragments of Everything September 5, 2007
I have to diagree with the other two reviewers. Like them, I bought it because I liked the author's books on the 1918 Flu and the 1927 Flood. This book is a mess, conceived of a way to get random pieces of previously published essays into a book with a common theme. Barry fails badly. Portraits of generally obscure athletes, very brief usually, are intertwined with the horrible Gingrich's attempts to destroy Speaker of the House Jim Wright in the 1980's, (Gingrich later got what HE deserved.) But the book just doesn't jell, at least for me. An athlete trying to be the fastest man in the world for personal glory just doesn't align with a politician trying and failing to do the right thing for America.
 makes newspaper reporters look naive April 13, 2005
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Like the other reviewer, I came to this book after reading another of Barry's books, in my case his latest, "The Great Influenza." (Next I'll try "Rising Tide.") What amazes me about this writer is he can handle so well, and in such depth, very very different topics. While I found much of the material on sports moving and interesting-- short profiles ranging from a world record holder in track to athletes trying to make it in the NFL-- the core of the book is its take on the political media. He looks at models of crowd behavior studied by a Nobel laureate and applies them to the press corps. It works magnificently. This is a very very original book, and extermely well written and readable.
provocative, informative, and good reading October 18, 2001
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I looked for this book because of Rising Tide, a magnificent work by the same writer, and was not disappointed. The author says he's writing about power from different perspectives, from the way athletes marshall power over themselves to the way political institutions work. So this is a collection of things that on the surface wouldn't seem to fit together-- a story on a friend of the author who went to Vietnam, pieces on football players and world record holding athletes originally published in places like Sports Illustrated, and chapters on politics, especially on Congress, Newt Gingrich and the Washington media. As strange a mix as that seems, somehow they do all fit together. And the individual chapters are not only moving, but on occasion extraordinarily insightful. If you think you understand Congress, read this and you'll discover a new world. If you think you understand the media, read this and you'll understand how and why it funcstions as it does at a level deeper than you ever have before. If you think you understand what makes world class and pro athletes tick, read this and you'll see that you didn't.
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