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Shake Down The Thunder by Murray Sperber Murray Sperber can be reached at sperber@indiana.edu. The Creation of Notre Dame Football "The most credible and seriously researched book about the early days of Notre Dame football... impressive."
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"This volume is destined to become a sports classic." -Library Journal (starred) "Punctures much of the Irish mythology... but the truth only makes the characters and their times more fascinating." -USA Today "Not just a book about sports, this is an astute, deft, moving account of how a determined group of people beat the odds to dominate the playing field and triumph over religious prejudice." -Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed) "An incisive portrait of Rockne and... an extraordinarily researched cultural history." -Booklist (starred) "Sperber... recounts events on and off the field. He tackles the details, great and small, unearthing a treasure... and parting the curtain of myth." -The New York Times Book Review "A monumental work of scholarship in both sports and social history." -Kirkus Reviews (starred)Notre Dame is considered the paragon of college football, with a history of almost mythical proportions. This is the story of its formative years, the reality behind the myths. Beginning with the humble origins of Notre Dame football in the nineteenth century, Murray Sperber traces the evolution of the team to its status as a preeminent football power. In writing Shake Down the Thunder, he possessed what no other writer about Notre Dame has ever had: the use of Knute Rockne's voluminous private correspondence, which sat unopened in the university library's basement since his death. Sperber illuminates individuals such as Jesse Harper, Knute Rockne, George Gipp, Father John O'Hara, Elmer Layden, Frank Leahy, and Grantland Rice. Both social history and sports history, this book documents as never before the first half century of Notre Dame football. |
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