The New York Times Book Review - Marc Tracy
People who see sports as an escape from the real world might be surprised at just how often the two overlap. The American experience constantly darts into the western Pennsylvania town of Aliquippa in S.L. Price's Playing through the Whistle…football is not his book's main subject; the decline and fall of a specific kind of American life is. With thickets of facts, Price unfurls social history in tandem with the successes and failures of the Aliquippa High Quips…If baseball is the national pastime, perhaps football is the national reality.
Publishers Weekly
08/08/2016
Aliquippa High School, in far-western Pennsylvania, has consistently groomed football players for the NFL—including Hall of Famer Mike Ditka, three-time Super Bowl Champion Ty Law, and All-Pro New York Jet Darrelle Revis—and it claimed 16 Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League titles between 1952 and 2015. But, as longtime Sports Illustrated senior writer Price notes in this exhaustive history of Aliquippa’s storied football program, basketball and baseball also enjoyed initial success at the school. Like many cities in the region during the 20th century, Aliquippa was a melting pot populated by factory families; in this case, the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company employed a good chunk of the town before falling on hard times and shutting down in 2000. But life in Aliquippa was always influenced by the city’s blue-collar history and its high school’s football program. Price (Pitching Around Fidel) takes his time detailing the rise of organized local labor unions and the role J&L played in shaping Aliquippa, and football remains on the sidelines for long stretches. When he does focus on the game, the author provides memorable characterizations of cocky English-teacher-turned-football-coach Mike Zmijanac in the 1970s and star defensive lineman Jeff Baldwin in the ’80s. Despite straying from the field, though, a more thorough account of any high school athletic program in the country would be tough to find. Agent: Andrew Blauner, Blauner Books Literary. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Playing Through the Whistle:
Finalist for the 2017 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing
Named a Best Book of 2016 by the Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, and Buffalo News (Best Sports Books)
An Amazon No. 1 Bestseller (Football)
An Amazon Best Book of the Month (History and Nonfiction)
“Evocative and enterprising . . . [Playing Through the Whistle] is a big book . . . capturing major cultural shifts (and tensions) in a regional microcosm.”—Wall Street Journal
“People who see sports as an escape from the real world might be surprised at just how often the two overlap. The American experience constantly darts into the western Pennsylvania town of Aliquippa in S.L. Price’s Playing Through the Whistle . . . Price unfurls social history in tandem with the successes and failures of the Aliquippa High Quips . . . If baseball is the national pastime, perhaps football is the national reality.”—New York Times Book Review
“[A] masterwork . . . Engrossing, and heartbreaking.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Price has created not only a thorough history of high school football in Aliquippa but also a meticulous chronicle of the labor movement and the rise and fall of industrial America . . . Price gives Aliquippa a chance to tell its own story in these pages. And an important story it is.”—Pittsburgh Magazine
“A great new book . . . Like the best sports books, Playing Through the Whistle is more than sports. It’s about history, it’s about geography, and most of all it’s about a place where the American Dream checked out a long time ago, and the only thing left behind is the echo of yesterday’s cheers. A book that should be read by anyone trying to understand what is happening in today’s America.”—Providence Journal
“I’m impressed with the book and its wide-ranging look from the eyes of an out-of-towner . . . I commend Price for his in-depth look into the history of the town and a special look at the sports side of it.”—Beaver County Times
“S.L. Price paints a beautiful, painful portrait of Aliquippa and its football program in Playing Through the Whistle . . . Price’s book is a tale that can swing from triumph to heartbreak in almost the blink of an eye.”—Pittsburgh City Paper
“S.L. Price chronicles a richly detailed history of Aliquippa football . . . An unvarnished decade-by-decade look at the town, the team and the synergy between them . . . A fitting memorial to a remarkable story of urban struggle and athletic prowess.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Probably my favorite sports book of the year, even though sports are only part of the story.”—Buffalo News (Best Sports Books for 2016)
“For NFL fans, Aliquippa, Pa., is known as a town that produced more than its share of football greatness. In an attempt to get at why, this book delves into the history of football, the state and draws a larger picture about American history. A great read.”—Toronto Star
“Playing Through the Whistle . . . looks at the struggling steel town of Aliquippa, Pa., through the prism of its high school football team. The author understands the Rust Belt particulars of the region better than most political professionals.”—Wall Street Journal (What to Give: Sports Books)
“[An] excellent book . . . Price captures the glory days when Aliquippa produced not only steel, but also prominent Americans, ranging from Mike Ditka to Henry Mancini.”—National Book Review
“S. L. Price . . . digs deep to report on Aliquippa’s intertwined history of steel and football . . . Playing Through the Whistle is a history of a town but it’s more than that . . . Price . . . writes perceptively about racial tensions, crack cocaine and the violence that has scarred Aliquippa . . . Honest, nuanced reporting.”—News & Observer
“Price thoroughly explores the football saga . . . but this is no mere sports story . . . An artful mix of history, economics, sociology, and athletics . . . Price’s especially touching engravings of ‘promise squandered,’ those chewed up and spit out by Aliquippa’s tough environment, contrast powerfully with the tales of football triumph . . . Price’s football story is really that of America’s Rust Belt in poignant miniature.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[An] exhaustive history . . . A more thorough account of any high school athletic program in the country would be tough to find.”—Publishers Weekly
“Price, a Sports Illustrated senior writer, tells the town’s story all very well . . . There are . . . revealing anecdotes about individual players and the coaches . . . Good stuff for Friday Night Lights devotees.”—Booklist
“Playing Through the Whistle is . . . rich history . . . In creative nonfiction journalistic style like that of Pete Hamill or Gay Talese . . . Price dramatically chronicles [Aliquippa’s] rise and fall . . . Playing Through the Whistle is an omnibus modern history of the United States as played out in the football ethos of small town Aliquippa, Pa.”—Shelf Awareness
“Year after year, some of the best books about the human condition come from sportswriters, and S.L. Price has added another illuminating work to that list. Playing Through the Whistle is about football in the legendary western Pennsylvania steel town of Aliquippa, but so much more. It is an evocative, wistful journey through decades of American struggle and achievement and loss.”—David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi and Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
“Applause to S.L. Price for the mind-blowing research and gorgeous storytelling. Playing Through the Whistle is a sprawling display of Price’s signature prose: sharp, vivid, and particular. You feel the heat of the blast furnace, the turf of the Friday night gridiron. With football as his lens, Price transports you to the glory days of an iconic American steel town, and envelops you in the saga of its ultimate demise.”—Jeanne Marie Laskas, New York Times best-selling author of Concussion
“S.L. Price’s Playing Through the Whistle is a big book on a tough town. It reminded me of The Wire, which is high praise.”—Roy Blount Jr., author of About Three Bricks Shy of a Load and Save Room for Pie
“S.L. Price is hands down the best writer about sports and the meaning of sports in America today, and this is his most ambitious and finest work yet. Playing Through the Whistle is an exhaustively reported and expertly written narrative about the rise and fall of industrial America—and football’s central place in that story.”—Stefan Fatsis, author of A Few Seconds of Panic and Word Freak
“Playing Through the Whistle is a gut-wrenching portrait of a high school football team that has to embody the American dream for one small town, in large part because everything else that was supposed to do it has fallen apart. I would say this is some of the best sports writing I read this year, except that it’s some of the best writing I’ve read this year.”—David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene
“Among Scott Price’s many interesting and well-crafted sentences is this: ‘Heavy industry and football share the same DNA.’ If so, the progeny of big steel is, in fact, high school football. Even as mill life disappears, football lives remain. With deeply nuanced reporting, and a style that’s both big-hearted and unsentimental, Playing Through the Whistle isn’t merely the history of an American town, but American history itself.”—Mark Kriegel, author of Namath and Pistol
Library Journal
08/01/2016
Price (Pitching Around Fidel) is best known for his work as a writer for Sports Illustrated. In this book, he conveys the history of an immigrant steel town though its changing demographics and a high school football team that has produced such future stars as Mike Ditka, Ty Law, and Darrelle Revis. The author begins with a long, detailed record of the origins of the local steel industry and its conflicting dynamic with organized labor. Once reaching the postwar era, the lives of numerous players and coaches are chronicled, with increasing racial tensions as a backdrop. From the late 1960s onward, the beginnings of the steel industry's decline exacerbated the region's many manifestations of societal dysfunction: drugs, gangs, violence, and corruption. Still, the football team stands as the one source of pride for a town that has been slowly dying for decades. VERDICT While this book is impressively researched and organized, it can be an exhausting read.
Kirkus Review
★ 2016-07-31
A senior Sports Illustrated writer tells a multigenerational story about Aliquippa, a Pennsylvania steel town, and its legendary high school football team.Heavy industry and football share the same DNA, writes Price (Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America, 2009, etc.). Both feature a hierarchical management structure; both involve collective striving, with various skills merging to produce the desired result; both “depend on—even celebrate—the implicit trade of health for money” or celebrity. Since the early 1900s, when the J&L Steel Company designed and built the town, until today, as surely as the blast furnaces once reliably churned out pig iron, the Quips have won a succession of regional and state championships, producing an astonishing number of football stars, most notably Mike Ditka, Tony Dorsett, Ty Law, and Darrelle Revis. Price thoroughly explores the football saga, focusing on four particularly successful coaches and their teams, but this is no mere sports story. The author produces an artful mix of history, economics, sociology, and athletics. He makes room for sketches of distinguished, nonsports native sons (composer Henry Mancini), a reform-minded governor’s wife, a J&L official who bossed the town, and Aliquippa’s first black mayor. As he travels through the decades, he packs the narrative with telling episodes: the presidential visits of John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, a landmark Supreme Court labor case slapping down J&L, the high school walkouts of the 1960s, protesting the lack of black cheerleaders. Price’s especially touching engravings of “promise squandered,” those chewed up and spit out by Aliquippa’s tough environment, contrast powerfully with the tales of football triumph. From the rigidly stratified life in the 1920s and ’30s during J&L’s “despotic prime,” to the brief, postwar golden age, “a moment of civic equipoise,” to today’s “company town without a company,” where the combination of unemployment, drugs, and crime crushes hope, Price’s football story is really that of America’s Rust Belt in poignant miniature.
