A well-researched and strongly narrated biography of iconic Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. The New Yorker’s rise to national prominence was slow, but included a playing career at then-powerful Fordham (where he was one of the ‘blocks of granite’) and coaching stints with Red Blaik’s Army and the New York Giants (alongside fellow assistant Tom Landry), such that his bloodlines were notable. Author Maraniss also notes often that Lombardi was friendly with many of the leading sportswriters / myth makers of the era — without saying whether that was product of his success or something he sought out. A stout Jesuit, Lombardi believed in presenting information at a pace so that the slowest in the group could understand, and in a menu of few plays with many options, drilled incessantly until execution was innate. The most famous of these was the sweep. At Green Bay, his success catapulted him into the realm of business leadership. The standard seven themes of his addresses: 1) pay the price, 2) the value of competition, 3) commitment to personal excellence, 4) more authority, less freedom (in reference to the tumultuous 1960s), 5) effective leaders are disciplined and impart that trait, 6) leaders are made, and most of all 7) character is a habit superimposed on temperament, and will is character in action. Maraniss cannot resist a bit of postmodern-inspired exploration of the gap between reality and popular understandings (or ‘myth’), as if this discord is not inevitably the case and indeed the very purpose of biography. A fine work on an interesting fellow.
Book abstracts
7. Fanning, From There to Here (4 May 2007)
An accessible tale of Ireland’s transition from staunchly amateur mediocrity to fourth in the world. Beginning with the disastrous Australian tour of 1994, the book revisits milestones of the next dozen years, demonstrating their resonance in the mid-2000s. Typically, each chapter treats one story as it unfolds over the course of a given season: the 1999 World Cup debacle, Eddie O’Sullivan’s rise to head, Munster’s 2006 Heineken Cup championship. Players, coaches, administrators often reflect on events in their own voice, complemented by Fanning’s vernacular. He is sympathetic to their views yet level in his evaluation, a noteworthy achievement. For the
- Sunday Independent
columnist, the real antagonists are management and administrators who haven’t thought their plans through, or don’t realize what is required. Why, for example, did the Irish union consider excluding Connacht from the program while continuing to spend hundred of thousands of pounds to send its leadership (and their wives) to away Six Nations games? Of course, most of Ireland’s hurdles have been more complicated. Fanning moves briskly, and like many journalists he is the more certain with the passage of time. The final chapters lose something of the work’s overall verve. This is a principal difference between news writers and historians, sometimes more willing to draw conclusions of events which the journalist views as still in progress. Should Ireland make an unprecedented run to the 2007 World Cup semifinals, it may be seen as the definitive account.
8. Gordon, Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defense, 1870-1914 (25 May 2023)
Traces efforts to establish an imperial defense strategy encompassing Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the Cape Colony in the years leading to World War I. The burden fell on Britain’s naval leaders, as the sea is not divisible, and while Churchill and Haldane made late efforts to establish political consensus, the matter was never solved: the British ultimately withdrew so as to defend the North Sea against Germany.
From 1850, Lord Grey championed relieving the British taxpayer, who shouldered 90 percent of defense costs. The Mills committee of 1862 commenced a decade-long withdrawal of military (army) postings to the dominions, paradoxically making imperialism a safe political cause. Britain thought the maturing colonies should progress from self-sufficiency to enlightened interest in the empire but the colonials wrangled over autonomy and the size of naval-subsidy payments to London. 1878’s Russian war scare carried the debate to more comprehensive review of imperial defense; in the following decade, the colonies were asked to participate in London’s councils.
Whether the empire ought to be a zollverein or kriegsverein remained unanswered: imperial federation were dead by the turn of the century, and as political imperialism waned, the Colonial Office’s Colonial Defense Committee (which morphed into the Committee for Imperial Defense) made the running. Yet the dominions were ‘patriotically’ responsive to the Boer War demands. Though the 1902 Colonial Conference produced no real advances in defense doctrine. Fisher’s appointment to the Admiralty and the initiation of two parliamentary committees in fact brought technical matters to a new phase. In this decade, the Canadians were pleased to acquire and staff two bases; the Aussies basked in the visit of America’s White Fleet, proof of a second partner against Japan.
The dreadnought crisis of 1909 opened the way to Canadian- and Australian-controlled navies, since Britain needed to husband cash to stave off the German buildup. Aussies welcomed Deakin’s efforts, while the Canadians contested Laurier’s for it cut across Anglo-French rivalries. (The New Zealanders, neither worried about the United States nor evidencing latent distrust of Irish immigrants, were typically content to sit close by the UK.) Thought the navy’s ‘blue water’ doctrine masked the degree to which the UK was retreating, the metropole knew the fight would be in Europe.
8. Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing (2 Jun 2007)
An introspective look at outdoor clothing maker Patagonia by its founder. Really a series of essays, the first sequence describes the formative years of a small climbing supplies company whose management mainly wanted to pursue those recreational interests that formed the basis of the business. The book elucidates how those views and accommodations became product and operating principles. Key breakthroughs in creating removable chocks and synchilla, made of recycled pop bottles, are outlined alongside flexible work policies and the incorporation of left-wing activism. Also an avid flyfisher and surfer, Chouinard’s attention to simplicity, top quality, and focus on a clearly envisioned customer (the ‘dirt bag’) are precursors to Apple and Google. Past failure such as an early crop of rugby shirts are pointed out, though there is little mention of the 1990 fiscal crunch on the sale of Lost Arrow, the hardware maker. Also interesting is the sketch of marketing outlets — Internet, wholesale (channel), retail, and catalog — with emphasis on how the company aims to inspire and educate but not promote. Such propagandizing is the departure point for critique of the ‘capitalist’ economy. Chouinard questions the imperative of continuous growth and calls for ‘true cost’ accounting, meaning evaluation of natural resource consumption, especially oil used in transport. This leads to a call for local self-sufficiency and consumption of local productions, suggestive of Maoist autarky (and in contrast to Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage). By book’s end, through the flogging of the company’s donating one percent of gross sales to activist causes and related campaigns, the book becomes conventionally leftist and so uninteresting. Good for the brand, but disappointing in its failure to outstrip the paradigm. Perry Klebahn observes
- Surfing
may appeal to baby boomers but is not certain to attract younger generations, and that in over 40 years of business, not one employee has made an identifiable contribution.
9. Allen, Getting Things Done (15 Jun 2007)
The summary consists of three maxims: 1) get things out of your head and onto paper (an organizer), 2) decide actions and ideal outcomes when things first come onto the radar (‘natural planning’), and 3) regularly review and update ‘open loops’. The decision tree is thoughtful, as is the categorization of longer-term goals. But too much busy work inheres in the system.
10. Krige, Right Place at the Wrong Time (27 June 2007)
A capable but standard ghostwritten autobiography of Springbok hero Corne Krige. The account is most interesting for its narrative of South Africa’s infamous Kamp Staaldraad assembly prior to the 2003 World Cup. Krige, an Alan Solomons man, also acknowledges there were too many Japies at Northampton in 2004, which year sent the Saints spiraling toward relegation. Too little about SA schools rugby, but some interesting passages about prep school culture.
16. Pringle, Australian Accent (5 August 2023)
Effectively a series of essays treating Australian society and culture, borrowing DH Lawrence’s conclusion that ‘the land is too big for the people’ – that is, British settlement on the eastern coast has generated bourgeois wealth but neither distinct culture nor identity. The Scottish-born, erstwhile editor of the Sydney Morning Herald observes the country in the mid-postwar era, when it was emerging from isolation via auto, radio, and plane. Politics comprised small matters, comparable to 18th-century England, when a man could launch a party and come to power in a lifetime. The Santamaria affair, which drove Soviet Communists from the Labor Party, receives the most specific attention. Wealth makes Aussies feel they are better off but not better. The Aussies were content with middle-class suburbia, there being nothing higher or transcendent, though all express longing for the Outback. Until the advent of TV, it was always better to be outside. In some of his best passages, from p115, he writes:
[In the Outback] Time resumes its ancient majesty of years and seasons. … There is nothing yet in the towns and cities which can compare with this lonely, privileged life of the graziers in the bush. Urban life is still essentially a second-hand version of urban life in England, America, and Europe. It would be hard to point to anything which is specifically Australian except, perhaps, the universal enjoyment of the pleasures of an outdoor life. … This open-air life has many virtues. It produces a strong, health, contented population, remarkably free from the worries and neuroses of most Western civilisations. … But it does tend to depress still further the general standards of education and the arts. … Unfortunately in Australia this low standard of cultural awareness seems to extend much higher in the social scale.
The country required an educated class, Pringle thought, for the rich especially graziers had declined to lead. But the country had no firmly established, nationally idiomatic arts – many of the most talented decamping to England. There was an emerging Rousseauan fetish of the Aboriginal, an observation well struck. Worried about Indonesia and Asia, unsure of its relationship with the UK, Australians are ultimately said to be lonely and disappointed (as per Lawrence’s Kangaroo). The concluding essay on Sydney rings true. The Lawrencian conclusion less so. Absent profound political crisis, crafting a unique, strong identity inside 250 years would be indeed miraculous.
15. Rose, Life is Worth Swimming (30 July 2023)
Semi-autobiography, semi-philosophical expository by Australian distance star Murray Rose. A triple gold-medalist at the 1956 Melbourne Games – then the youngest ever – Rose was less successful in Rome (winning a medal of each hue), triumphed 4 times at the 1962 Commonwealth Games, and was controversially excluded from 1964’s national trials. He established 15 world records in the 400, 800, and 1500 freestyle while being one of the first overseas recruits, to Peter Daland’s USC. Remaining in the US, Rose became a marketing professional, sometime actor, and NBC commentator. The book interestingly sketches his World War II expatriate parents but omits his first own marriage. Upon his 1994 return to Sydney, the Australian sports community lionized the vegetarian and devotee of Indian-turned-Californian guru Jiddu Krishnamurti. Most interesting are details of Aussie life and swimming in the 1950s. Most kids rarely wore shoes outside school; competitors had no goggles, often trained in bayside ‘pools’ or Manly reservoir, and did open turns against algae- and barnacle-covered walls. Rose liked competing in storms, from which he drew energy, and never had warmup pools; competitors false started to get a feel for water. In 1956, Aussies were the first cohort to shave. His best swims, he relates, were when absorbed in his own rhythm (p88); the first warning sign of fatigue is loss of mental focus; and the real challenge of sport is not competition but training the right way. One’s calling is not work but a craft: train not to get it right but to get it right when things go wrong, train for clarity and purpose not fitness. Hope not for victory but courage. His philosophy, which permeates the book along with contemporary pictures, is Eastern transcendentalist. Children are artificially ‘programmed’: the ‘opportunity to hold the window open to all the mysteries of life soon passes’ (p34). Is there not wisdom too in convention? By the book’s end, he has overdrawn: detachment (‘choiceless awareness’) is always good, everything must be examined; what of Burkean prejudice?
11. Wendt, The Wall Street Journal (17 Aug 2007)
Narrates the rise of Dow Jones to the 1980s, emphasizing the
- Wall Street Journal’s
pathbreaking transition from trade publication to the country’s first national newspaper. CW Barron and Barney Kilgore are the protagonists, the former for his world-renowned stature as a journalist and confidence of the elite, and the latter for introducing news analysis and quirky ‘A hed’ stories. Perforce, the author treats major economic and political events, and thereby delves into the growth and influence of the editorial page. Wendt’s work displays a now-quaint preoccupation with printing and delivery operations.
12. Wood, The American Revolution (18 Aug 2007)
Authoritatively summarizes the War of Independence, featuring political and military events plus social and ideological transformation. After sketching colonial America, Wood moves briskly through the conflict. The book is more powerful in discussing the consequences of triumphant republicanism and the course toward the Constitution. Locating sovereignty in the people not only sealed the Federalists’ case but also clinched the defeat of egalitarianism, which was already bested in trade, culture, and religion. The national charter further converted Montesquieu’s assumption that democracy requires small polities into the Madisonian ‘balance of conflict’ model. There are interesting sections on the dysfunctions of state government, notably legislative overreach on behalf of special interests, which extends the normal portrayal of powerless national government. A very useful bibliographic essay.