Text Review #2

“Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman” by Jon Krakauer is a must read. If you don’t know anything about Pat Tillman and his story either, then this is a good place to start. This book covers the life of Pat Tillman from his early life, to football, to joining the army, and his eventual death. Also his death is not a spoiler, if you turn to the back cover and it talks about that right there, so no spoiler was given, so please do not judge this review based on that.

This book also covers the topic of the Al Qaeda, 9/11, and the conflict in Afghanistan. This book is also great for a person that is a non-sports fan. Do not shy away from a great read just because you are afraid of the aspect of the sports in the life story of Pat Tillman.

How can someone not affiliated or related to the family write a book about the life of Pat Tillman you may ask yourself. Well Krakauer does it, and I think he does it amazingly. If you look near the back of the book on page 296 he breaks down every little detail from the book and where he got that information chapter by chapter. Between hundreds of interviews and hundreds of material reviewed and does it while compiling a great book.

The book even dives into the details of his death and how it was reported a different way for public to fuel them and get them more angry about the war and reveals the truth. Krakauer does a really good job at diving into these topics with the war with the Taliban and the propaganda behind it, as he writes it from an angry perspective.

Another focus of the book is NFL contract. How Pat Tillman walked away from the future of millions of dollars to continue playing in the NFL and really covers why he decided to go after 9/11 and how that was a huge factor in everything that fueled him to do so.

This book focuses on so many different aspects of Pat Tillman’s life, especially the army, but I think he does a great job of covering all so if you didn’t know anything about Pat Tillman coming into this book, then you were able to learn and fall in love with the guy he was and the hero he was. Pat Tillman was truly a great man and I think it is not easy to do in under three hundred pages, but Krakauer does it amazingly.

Overall this was a very good book. For most people that know the Pat Tillman story, it is not hard to convince them to read this book. For people that don’t know anything, it is a little harder to convince them to read a book about about a NFL player that walked away to go fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, as non sports fans tend to shy away.

I would give this book a nine out of ten. Mostly because I worry a little bit about what is one hundred percent factual in the book as it is hard to talk about a man’s life that is not there to talk about it. And comparing it to my first book review, it is completely written differently then a Paul Shirley book, zero sarcasm was applied. Anybody reading this, please go out and read “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.” If you don’t like it (which you will), I would be willing to talk to you on why you don’t think so.

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