League of Denial
The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth
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4.2 • 69 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “meticulously documented and endlessly chilling” (The New York Times) exploration of the NFL’s decades-long attempt to deny and cover up mounting evidence connecting football and brain damage.
“A first-rate piece of reporting [that] adds crucial detail, texture, and news to the concussion story, which despite the NFL’s best efforts, isn’t going away.”—Time
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR
“Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness.
Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football.
In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru expose the public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields and examine how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research—a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. They chronicle the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of a scientific battle between researchers and the NFL.
Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private e-mails, League of Denial is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it—questions at the heart of a crisis that threatens American football—and of the battle for the sport’s future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While the NFL is the most profitable and popular sports league in America, it's recently been buffeted by concerns around the long-term effect concussions have had on former players. ESPN investigative reporters Fainaru-Wada and Fainaru lay out evidence that the NFL actively obfuscated attempts by independent scientists and medical professionals to draw a connection between football's inherent violence and chronic brain disease afflicting former players. The narrative is fast-paced and almost cinematic in the way it describes the culture of the gridiron, and in the picture it provides of the NFL research labs where scientists drew their conclusions, and the NFL boardrooms where football executives decided to go to war. Sadly, David H. Lawrence XVII's narration undermines this brisk, exciting pace. From a technical standpoint, listeners will have few quibbles: Lawrence narrates crisply and cleanly. He perfectly pronounces every syllable. And yet, he's oddly robotic and often monotone. For a topic as emotionally charged as the NFL, Lawrence's stiff narration will confuse and alienate listeners. A Crown hardcover.
