Nicholas Dawidoff

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF, bestselling author of The Catcher Was a Spy and The Crowd Sounds Happy, for a discussion of his latest book, Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football.

We watch football every Sunday, but we don't really see it. By spending a year with the New York Jets, Nicholas Dawidoff explored the game in such an intimate way that he can now put you right inside the NFL. Collision Low Crossers is a story that is part Paper Lion and part Moneyball, part Friday Night Lights and part The Office. In this absorbing, funny, and vividly written narrative, he describes the Combine, the draft, the practices, the strategy meetings, all while thinking deeply about such fundamental truths and the nature of success and disappointment in a massive and stressful collective endeavor.

Most of what happens in today's NFL takes place at team facilities, walled off from fans and, until now, from writers. The New York Jets issued Dawidoff a security code, a locker, and a desk in the scouting department: for an entire year he lived with the team, from early-morning quarterback meetings to edgy late-night conversations. Dawidoff makes an emblematic NFL season come alive for fans and nonfans alike. 

Here is football in many faces: the Jets' polarizing, brilliant, and hilarious head coach, Rex Ryan; the general manager, whose job is to support (and suppress) the irrepressible Ryan; the defensive coaches and their in-house rivals, the offensive coaches; players like the incomparable All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis and the young, erratic quarterback Mark Sanchez. Wise safeties, brooding linebackers, high-strung cornerbacks, enthusiastic rookies, and even a well-read nose tackle create a full portrait of obsessed men at work. 

"On every significant American subject there are only a handful of really good books, and Collision Low Crossers is one of the best books ever written about sports. Dawidoff takes you into a closed world of interesting men who are obsessed with how to perfect the art of football. The book is closely and boldly observed, frankly reported, ferociously written with both humor and humanity; it teems with wonderful lines, rich and vivid passages. The end result is what all coaches long for, the magical pleasure of watching a perfectly managed game that ends in a great victory." —Thomas Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Man Who Kept The Secrets and The Killing of Crazy Horse