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I bought the DVD set of games that is also available and watched a few of them while I was reading this book. What the author delivers here is a disjointed commentary that floats from one topic to the next, with no transition or resolution to the schizophrenic anecdotes that are hurled at the reader. It's an unbelievably annoying style that I've fortunately never encountered before. The pages are littered with quotes from the players and other personnel that may or may not be related to one of the topics in the general area of the quote.
My one star review is not meant to convey any negative feelings toward the Chicago Bears in general. Suffice it to say that this particular book adds nothing to the enjoyment of reliving that glorious season. And to say that the quotes are relevant or interesting would be extremely generous.I was excited to read this account of the great 1985 Chicago Bears. It is merely my opinion of the quality of THIS particular book, which is bad.Take an interesting, if not fascinating, sports subject and grant unfettered access to the participants, and one usually expects a relatively coherent summary account filled with interesting insights not available in other forums.
However, the author never indicates where you should stop reading and jump to the quote, so the reader is constantly being interrupted. I strongly recommend looking at one of the other alternatives that is available simply because nothing can possibly be as annoying as the writing "style" of this particular author. At least that's what I usually expect. The author routinely introduces a subject in one paragraph and then jumps to another subject in the next paragraph without finishing the original thought.Then there are the quotes.
It's worth a read. There were plenty of tidbits here and there throughout the book to keep me interested. There were some things in here I didnt know about and I felt the book did its job adequately.
His writing style was more like reading 200+ pages of USA Today style "snippets" of information than a cohesive tale of a historically great football team.In the hands of a more capable storyteller, this book may have been a winner, but the lack of new information and poor organization of the material made this one a loser for me. Some topics are dropped without conclusion and others appear intermittently throughout the book without any rhyme or reason. His stories seem to end abruptly, and he jumps immediately into another topic without a decent segue.
Not only did this book fail to prove, unequivocally, that these Bears were the best team in professional football history, but also failed to thoroughly reveal the team's "self destruction" in any significant way. Maybe he wasn't able to publish his juiciest findings--did an overly cautious publishing company dump the good stuff. I had high hopes for Mullin's book on the 1985 Bears, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed that the book failed to deliver much of anything that hadn't been reported during and following the 1985 season.
In any event, the book was dismally underachieving in terms of bringing any new information to light.Additionally, and this is more a matter of personal taste, I found Mullin's style to be a little disjointed. I kept reading in hopes of something to make the task of reading this book worthwhile, but such a moment never materialized. While there were a few of interesting behind-the-scenes stories, the book is dissatisfying in terms of being long on common knowledge about the team and short on inside information.
John Mullin is a reporter with a major Chicago newspaper and should have more "reach" into the non-public happenings of the team than he demonstrated in the book.
My cousin loves this book and reads it when his beloved team isn't playing. How could you go wrong for a Christmas present to a Bear's fan.
It was full of characters and stories from top to bottom. It does retell a lot of commonly known tales (Walter Payton's disappointment at not scoring in the Super Bowl) and adds a few tidbits to them.In the end though, this Bears team was fascinating. This book disappoints in not giving more meat to existing stories and not uncovering enough unknown stories. This book follows the rise and fall of the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears. Unfortunately, it falls way short of the same greatness that they achieved.While the book does a nice job of revealing some new stories (like the Jay Hilgenberg saga), it doesn't really uncover much of substance regarding the Bears.
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