Posnanski paterno biography of martin

The scandal. A very touchy and disturbing issue. The author handles it with an even-handed approach. The sad end. The investigation, the illness and the end. The author does this section justice. An excellent notes section that covers how the majority of the material for the book was obtained. Negatives: 1. The biggest downfall of biographies is that many of the highlights of the book have been revealed to the public.

If you are not a college football fan you will struggle through those sections that emphasize the game that I particularly enjoyed. Those looking for a book about just the scandal will be disappointed, this book is about the life of Joe Paterno and all that it entailed including the scandal. In summary, I really enjoyed this book. First of all, let me state for the record that I have no affiliation with Penn State.

The purpose of my review is to provide a personal assessment of the quality of the book, not to defend Joe Paterno. The most important thing about a biography is how it corresponds to reality and to convey it in an entertaining and accessible manner to the public. Posnanski succeeds on all fronts. I highly recommend this book! Jessica Frizzell. Brian Katz.

A great book. Starting with Joe in his early days in school, working up through the many years as coach at Penn State. It was great to re-live some of those years - I attended Penn State from to , where the team was national champion - and to hear from those that knew him and that he coached. He worked tirelessly to improve the lives of others, with no hint of self recognition for his actions.

He and his family gave millions to the University they loved in order to enhance their lives through eduction and opportunity. Joe had a significant positive impact on the lives of many of his players and the Penn State community and will be missed. Over the many years he clashed with the media and the board of trustees, so much so, that in the end, it was them that threw Joe under the bus without proper due process.

Very sad. As for the Sandusky matter, interesting to learn that Joe and Sandusky never liked each other. Sandusky for Joe as he believed that he should have succeeded Joe, and Joe for Sandusky because he believed that Sandusky was lazy and unorganized. Some believe that the reason the Penn State team's of the early 's did not do well is because Sandusky was no longer defensive coordinator.

The incident with Sandusky was properly handled by law enforcement. Joe should not be in the cross hairs for this. The incident with Sandusky was reported by Joe to his superiors at the University. Morally, Joe should have done more. During that time, however, I would argue that it was not so clear. Sandusky was a master mind at covering up his obsession.

I am still of the view that we need to see the cases of Schultz and Curley litigated and the facts presented to better understand what happened during before judgement can be rendered. That includes i taking games way, ii fining the University; and iii punishing the existing students and players under the recent NCAA sanctions. I thought is was a very good book by someone who had amazing access to Joe and those who knew him best.

I do believe firmly that this man who stood for integrity and academic scholarship coming before football did not know anymore than he said. I believe if the creep had been working for Joe, at the time of the incidents, he would have followed up more and I believe he regretted leaving that up to others. This man made millions at the end of his life but he walked away from countless more millions in the NFL on several occasions so that he could have a positive impact on young men.

It is amazing that as a culture, we enjoy tearing down and destroying reputations,rather than believe in the actions that someone demonstrated over a lifetime. I am afraid that says a lot about who we have become as an American society. One of the toughest spots ever for a biographer. Posnanski was just about finished with this book when the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke.

He would have had to completely start over again, and would have lost the cooperation of the family in the process. The result is a fascinating misfire. Tristan Miller. Fantastic read for anyone who loves college football. Joe Paterno will always go down in history as one of the best college football coaches of all time. This book goes over the scandal that occurred later in his life and other key moments of his historical career.

Michael Cawley. Best Joe Paterno biography. I have no idea what this book's purpose is - particularly because I know that before the Sandusky scandal rocked Penn State, Posnanski was writing the book anyway. The author suggests that he was writing the book because he had reason to believe Paterno was going to retire at the end of the season, even before disaster struck.

If he was writing a swan song book, he abandoned that mission, maybe because the scandal rendered it moot, and maybe because the last season of Joe Paterno's life just wasn't that interesting, sexual predators aside. It's not difficult to believe the final season was less than compelling because the picture I got from reading this book was of an extraordinarily ordinary man who did the same thing day after day, year after year, decade after decade.

I couldn't imagine reading a biography of a more boring person than the Joe Paterno described in this book. For all the inside access supposedly provided to Posnanski, the quotes from Paterno, most unforgivingly when they pertain to Sandusky, are superficial and wholly unenlightening. Paterno asks Posnanski how he feels about the whole scandal.

Posnanski reveals that he told Paterno he should have done more. Yeah, I shoulda, Paterno said. That is the extent of his interior monologue revealed. Few biographies, even those whose authors aim to be comprehensive, actually are comprehensive. A biographer has no mandate to be impartial and of course most are unapologetically biased.

Let the next writer tackle the dark side, the one with that agenda. Strangely then, Posnanski dwells extensively on just how over the hill Paterno was in the late 90s and early s - and when Paterno rallies - apparently only because Spanier threatened to force him to retire - there is no explanation of what Paterno actually did to turn things around.

It's curiously inside out. I'm happy to see that the author could see both sides, but it's actually on the positive side that he lets us down. The turnaround of the late s is summarized in a few paragraphs - he modernized! He revitalized! He allowed offensive players to - do what, exactly? What did Joe Paterno do? Why did he do it?

Why did he change? Why didn't he change sooner? Unfortunately, really the whole book is like that. Important moments are glossed over, while seemingly minor anecdotes are given whole chapters. David Paterno has a life-threatening trampoline accident and, if it's mentioned, it's so brief that I missed it entirely. George Paterno dies - of what, exactly?

It's hinted that it was drink related it was a heart attack , but never stated. This kind of lack of detail is surprising, coming from a working journalist, and even knowing that the book was hurried onto shelves. Not that George Paterno's cause of death is important in the overall scheme of a Joe Paterno biography, but it's just one of many examples of how the book fails to reveal the details that, for me, make a biography worth reading.

Several times, Posnanski writes that something is not for him to say - such as what the board of trustees was thinking when it decided to fire Paterno. Well, nobody made him write the book, so it's up to him to say whatever the heck he wants to say. He didn't not delve more deeply into the board's actions because it was out of his jurisdiction.

He didn't delve into the board's actions because he decided not to. End of story. Posnanski writes that Paterno didn't like Sandusky, and later restates it with emphasis, implying that the poor relationship between the men somehow provides Paterno some cover. It's weak, desperate, and in any case, the case is poorly made. If Paterno wanted Sandusky gone so bad, he had the perfect opportunity to get rid of him.

Given that Paterno throughout the book is portrayed throughout the book as confrontational, egotistical and single minded, his failure to report Sandusky actually becomes more sinister: it becomes almost impossible to believe that Paterno did not decide that reporting Sandusky would be worse than not reporting him. For all that Posnanski does to suggest that Paterno's personal notes contained no mention of Sandusky, and therefore indicate that he did not really know what was going on, they ignore the equally likely possibility that the coach who had his hand in everything simply got rid of any references he had made to Sandusky, or never made them in the first place knowing they would be incriminating.

Paterno did, after all, go to Brown. If you don't know much about Joe Paterno, this book will introduce you to him at least. It will be up to you after that to go out and find other sources that hopefully can give you a fuller picture. If you're here to know how Joe Paterno felt about the scandal that ruined his life - or heck, even how Sue Paterno felt - keep looking.

Chris Bridson. I read this book because I wanted to read something by Posnanski, and this was the only one of his works available in my library. I'll have to read more of his columns because I don't feel I have a good sense of his writing style.

Posnanski paterno biography of martin

His subject in this book is a very controversial man. Some say Posnanski shouldn't have written this book, but he was already so deep into the project that I'm sure it was difficult to think about stopping it. The timing was unreal. I think Paterno, either consciously or subconsciously, wanted to protect his program much to the detriment of the victims.

Unfortunately, every sentence of this book drips with irony. I'll never forget when he walked past me one day and cheerily said hello. I almost fell over--the legendary JoePa acknowledging me We were proud of Joe. Unlike many, if not most college football coaches, he took education seriously. His players filled the library, studying and meeting with their tutors one of my friends was a tutor--Joe wasn't just putting on a show.

He was a character, with his Brooklyn accent, "Coke-bottle" glasses, floods, and white socks. Before I attended Penn State, I couldn't have cared less about football. I never lived anywhere long enough to develop an allegiance to any pro or college team. I was completely ignorant of Penn State's football team--"They have a football team? So you can imagine what it felt like when the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke.

As more and more details emerged, we became more and more horrified. And when it was discovered that Joe was told about Sandusky's despicable behavior, and told the appropriate authorities, but never followed up any further, it was like a blow to the stomach. How could our Joe have done that? It couldn't be true. Sadly, it was. It became very difficult to be a Penn Stater for a while--just by virtue of being a student or an alum, you were somehow guilty too.

On the top of a mountain in Slovenia, yes, Slovenia, I ran into a couple in their 70s who were Penn State alums. We had a sad conversation about the unimaginable situation there. Joe Posnanski had already started writing a biography of Joe Paterno, with his and his family's blessing, before this scandal broke. In this honest and surprising portrait, Joe Posnanski brings new insight and understanding to one of the most controversial figures in America.

Previews available in: English. Add another edition? Copy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help? Paterno Joe Posnanski, Joe Posnanski. My Reading Lists:. Create new list Cancel. Read None Edit. When did you finish this book? What is Perlego? We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month.

Do you support text-to-speech? Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. The Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal and Paterno's sudden death, of course, forced the author to change the tone and focus of the book, and the result, Paterno —the title is as generic as Penn State's uniforms—seems to have been rushed out before interest in Paterno died out altogether.

His statue outside the University's football stadium has already been removed. As a biography, Paterno is spotty at best. Some of the writing is flaccid and marred by bad poetry. Sample: "Paterno's honesty came from a real place: from the Brooklyn streets. For instance, Paterno himself revealed that he had disappointed his father by choosing a career in football over the study of law in his autobiography, By The Book.

That Paterno feared retirement after his friend Paul "Bear" Bryant died within a month of stepping down as Alabama's coach, was first suggested in Frank Fitzpatrick's book, The Lion in Autumn. One problem is that Posnanski does not know college football, or at least he doesn't know much about it before this century. His book is littered with statements about the game that simply are not true.

Writing about Penn State's unbeaten team he writes of "how little respect the so-called experts had for eastern football. I don't know what he means by "so-called experts. Studying the numbers for the season, it seems to me that if anything, Penn State was overrated with a cheesecloth schedule. Penn State's opponents that year won just 49 of 93 games.

This wasn't necessarily Paterno's fault; he was bound to play relative weaklings by both regional affiliations and tradition—such as Navy, Army, Maryland, Boston College, and Pittsburgh—and schedules were usually set years in advance. No one really doubted the toughness of Paterno's teams, but people in other parts of the country thought, and rightly so, that Penn State was a giant among pygmies.

There wasn't, for the first several years of Paterno's coaching career, a single first rate football power in the Northeast besides Penn State, and he did not face tough competition until he began to schedule regular season games with other national powerhouses such as Alabama, Notre Dame, and Nebraska. More baffling is Posnanski's assertion that by the season Paterno "would be the most famous and admired coach in America.

A charitable assessment is that by Paterno might have been one of the ten most famous coaches in America. About two-thirds of the way through Paterno , the Sandusky scandal enters Paterno's life as though through a side door, and then of course, for the last or so pages, becomes the story. It's not enough to say that Posnanski does not do well relating the facts of the Sandusky case and Paterno's role in it.

The truth is that he doesn't really try. And what is so complicated about that story? The answer to "how" the board made its decision is quickly and nearly unanimously. The answer to "why" is that Paterno, as revealed in his own testimony to a grand jury and through numerous emails that have been revealed since investigations began, had full reason to suspect Sandusky's monstrous crimes against children and did nothing to stop him.

This is the crux of the matter. Time and again, Posnanski writes as if it was his intention to make clear issues cloudy. One example: In the months after Paterno died, "some evidence surfaced that he made been told something about the incident"—the first time rumors of Sandusky depravities surfaced—"though what he was told remained unclear.

And: Scott Paterno, Joe's son "came away convinced that the only thing Joe knew about Sandusky's alleged crimes Even if it is true, as the Paterno family still insists, that McQueary was not clear when telling the coach what he saw—though it strains credibility to think Paterno knew nothing of the rumors—how could Paterno have not understood what McQueary was describing?

Posnanski admits that Paterno concluded that what McQueary told him "was of a sexual nature. If, God forbid, McQueary had been describing something that had been done to a member of Paterno's family, would he have been satisfied simply to contact Penn State's athletic director, put him in touch with McQueary, and walk away?