The Education of a Coach

Product Description Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam's bestseller takes you inside the football genius of Bill Belichick for an insightful profile in leadership. Bill Belichick's thirty-one years in the NFL have been marked by amazing success--most recently with the New England Patriots. In this groundbreaking book, David Halberstam explores the nuances of both the game and the man behind it. He uncovers what makes Bill Belichick tick both on and off the field. "Halberstam does for the three-time Super Bowl winner what Moneyball did for the Oakland A's Billy Beane." --Best Life "If you want to learn about schooling and allegiance and leadership and, most of all, football, by all means--slip inside the sweatshirt." --The Wall Street Journal "Halberstam takes the classic sports-bio formula--one stellar performer's rise to the pinnacle of American sport--and transforms it into a nuance-rich story of individual triumph and social history." --Booklist "In describing the triumph of 'an unadorned man,' a coach without artifice, Halberstam has created a tale of excellence." --The New York Times Book Review From Publishers Weekly Pulitzer-winning journalist and author Halberstam focuses on Bill Belichick, one of the NFL's most successful coaches, and the game of football as a team sport with rich detail, exacting research and colorful anecdotes. He reveals what fans of the head coach of the New England Patriots have always known: the roots of Belichick's coaching lie in the essential mentoring by his father, an excellent teacher and college coach who taught his son how to scout players and teams, instructing the author on how to study films of players when he was just nine years old. As an assistant coach working with Bill Parcells's New York Giants in the 1980s, Belichick's "football first" credo was born of precision and discipline. He went on to guide the Patriots to win three Super Bowls in four years (2002, 2004 and 2005). Halberstam brings to his seventh sports book an encyclopedic knowledge of football, a firm grasp on the inner workings of effective coaching, an understanding of the systematic roles of the players and a shrewd psychological analysis of Belichick himself as a man and team leader. His book reminds readers that "residence at the top [is] as much a product of good fortune as it [is] of talent, willpower and planning." (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the Author David Halberstam is one of America's most distinguished journalists and historians. After graduating from Harvard in 1955, he covered the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, then was sent overseas by the New York Times to report on the war in Vietnam. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam reporting at the age of 30. His last fourteen books (which include The Best and the Brightest and Hyperion's Firehouse and Teammates) have all been New York Times bestsellers. He lives in New York City. Review "If you want to learn about schooling and allegiance and leadership and, most of all, football, by all means--slip inside the sweatshirt."― The Wall Street Journal "Halberstam takes the classic sports-bio formula--one stellar performer's rise to the pinnacle of American sport--and transforms it into a nuance-rich story of individual triumph and social history."― Booklist "In describing the triumph of 'an unadorned man,' a coach without artifice, Halberstam has created a tale of excellence."― The New York Times Book Review From AudioFile Bill Belichick is now coach of the New England Patriots football team. His teams have won three of the past five Super Bowls, and he was an assistant coach on champion teams twice before. In this book, journalist David Halberstam examines what makes Belichick, never a pro athlete himself, successful. He explores Belichick's childhood (his father was a successful collegiate coach) and early professional coaching career. Halberstam