... fascinating ... olt's book is a transfixing look at a season in the Ivy League that would culminate in one of the most unforgettable matches in college football history ... Colt's book is based heavily on interviews with the players involved in the legendary game, and he paints rich portraits of many of them ... Colt dedicates 52 pages to the game itself — and he writes so evocatively and so intensely, it's hard to put the book down for even a second. It's an absolutely remarkable piece of sportswriting ... There's no doubt that football fans will find The Game fascinating — Colt understands the nuances of the sport, and he writes about it with an enthusiasm that never descends into rah-rah fandom. But you don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy the book; like Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, its human focus makes it accessible to everyone, even if you don't know the difference between a touchback and a touchdown. Vibrant, energetic and beautifully structured, The Game is a big-time winner.
Sports fans will never agree about which college football game was the greatest ever. But there can be no disagreement about the greatest headline ever printed in a college newspaper. It was 'Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29,' and it appeared in the Harvard Crimson after the Harvard-Yale game of 1968 ... The Game, by George HoweColt, is the rare sports book that lives up to the claim of so many entrants in this genre: It is, in its way, the portrait of an era.
Colt...offers a richly detailed, engaging story of the 1968 Harvard vs. Yale football battle that pitted against each other two undefeated teams and two different cultures and served as a metaphor for the cultural clashes that were erupting in the late 1960s: civil rights, anti-war protests, political assassinations. There is a personal voice here, too: The author, who was 14 at the time, attended the game with his father; near the beginning and end of the book, he discusses that experience. In between, he takes us to Yale and Harvard (alternating chapters), introduces us to key players and other personnel, rehearses the games earlier in the season, and focuses on the cultural clashes and confrontations that were a mark of the era—and ours ... First-rate reporting and writing that will appeal to gridiron fans and general readers as well.
...A Harvard grad who attended football games in the 1960s with his alumnus father, Colt gives the story an intimate feel as he covers a wide swath of topics beyond Harvard Stadium, the Yale Bowl, and the two undefeated football teams that met in 'the Game' on the last day of the ’68 season. Colt demonstrates the changing nature of these historic universities as well as the country in general by interweaving such topics as civil rights, religious freedom, class struggle, white privilege, and the Vietnam War with anecdotes of players from the game who are African-American, Jewish, poor, rich, military veterans, or conscientious objectors. The result gives the heavy political and social discourse a personal touch ... This...history illustrates sport’s powerful role in American society.
