Love, Zac, Reid Forgrave
Love, Zac, Reid Forgrave
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
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Love, Zac
Small-Town Football and the Life and Death of an American Boy

Author: Reid Forgrave

Narrator: Jason Culp

Unabridged: 9 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/08/2020

Synopsis

"Love, Zac is not just a vital contribution to the national conversation about traumatic brain injury in athletes, it’s so beautifully written it belongs on the shelf alongside classic works of literary journalism.” —Jeanne Marie Laskas, New York Times bestselling author of Concussion

In December 2015, Zac Easter, a twenty-four-year-old from small-town Iowa, decided to take his own life rather than continue his losing battle against traumatic brain injuries he had sustained as a high school football player and which led him to develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). For this deeply reported and powerfully moving true story, award-winning writer Reid Forgrave was given access to Zac’s own diaries and was able to speak with Zac’s family, friends, and coaches. He explores Zac’s tight-knit, football-obsessed Midwestern community; he interviews leading brain scientists, psychologists, and sports historians; he takes a deep dive into the triumphs and sins of the sports entertainment industry; and he shows us the fallout from the traditional notions of manhood that football instills. For parents wondering about whether to allow their kids to play football, for players, former players, and fans, for anyone concerned about concussions and sports, this eye-opening, heart-wrenching, and ultimately inspiring story may be one of the most important books they will read.

About Reid Forgrave

Reid Forgrave writes about sports and other topics for GQ, the New York Times Magazine, and Mother Jones, among other publications. He has covered the NFL and college football for FoxSports.com and CBS Sports, and he currently writes for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. The article in which he first wrote about Zac Easter is included in Best American Sports Writing 2018 . A past life found him working at the Des Moines Register in Iowa, where he wrote long-form narrative journalism and covered the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. Forgrave lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two sons. Love, Zac is his first book.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tracie on April 22, 2021

Non-fiction 4.5* I have been fascinated by the stories regarding CTE and the NFL for a number of years. I really became interested after the Aaron Hernandez story. What this book does is bring CTE home in a way that we don't think about. Our kids are getting this disease, not just millionaires from t......more

Goodreads review by Allison on November 27, 2020

The subject of this book, sports-generated brain trauma, is certainly timely and I was expecting a story that would capture my interest on several levels and provide much needed information. The story quickly introduces us to Zac and his all-American family We are shown how football in small town Am......more

Goodreads review by Matt on May 27, 2020

This was excellent, tragic, eye-opening, and gut-wrenching. The work explores the role of football in American culture and the future of football in light of CTE and other concussion based trauma and damage. These two themes center around the life of Zac Easter. An Iowa football player. The story fo......more

Goodreads review by Madison on June 09, 2022

December - I gave this book a poor rating because it was hard for me to follow along with. I thought that the book was going to revolve around Zac's death. Instead it mostly talked about football stats, football history and Zac's chilldhood growing up with football. I don't play football so it isn't......more

Goodreads review by Dedra ~ A Book Wanderer on September 25, 2020

Despite sitting in the stands for four consecutive years in high school as a member of my school's marching band--this doesn't even include the years I attended games before and after high school--I still don't understand all the logistics of football. My very math-averse brain just doesn't understa......more

Quotes

“What an accomplishment. Brimming with compassion and insight, Reid Forgrave has written an artful and intimate portrait of a former high school football star that travels ambitiously into themes of masculinity, suffering, and the nature of a national obsession. Love, Zac is not just a vital contribution to the national conversation about traumatic brain injury in athletes, it’s so beautifully written it belongs on the shelf alongside classic works of literary journalism.”
—Jeanne Marie Laskas, New York Times bestselling author of Concussion

“Sportswriter Forgrave stuns in this moving debut . . . This unflinching exposé is one anyone who loves the sport should pick up.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The concussion epidemic has spread devastation to players in the less visible strata of the sport, especially to high school players like Zac Easter. Love, Zac shows the totality of that damage in full. Someone should staple this book to Roger Goodell’s forehead.”
—Drew Magary, author of The Hike and The Postmortal  

“An essential work of sports reporting, Love, Zac explores the dark side of small-town football culture and the warning signs of CTE, interspersed with passages from Zac’s diary and interviews with his family and friends.”
—New York Post

“An intelligent, provocative tale that will give pause to many parents of football players at any level.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A tragic, moving story that will linger with readers of sports and biographies in general.”
—Library Journal
 
“A heartbreaking biography [that] underscores the moral ambiguity of supporting life-threatening sports.”
—Shelf Awareness

“A monumental achievement of deep reporting and expert storytelling. One question echoes from every page of this book: What happened to Zac Easter? In seeking the answers, Reid Forgrave has written a detective story, a love story, and a parable about football, pain and the consequences of the bedrock version of American masculinity.”
—Michael Sokolove, author of The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino and Drama High

“An in-depth exploration not only of football and its risks, but of the empty-calorie culture into which we are driving young men. It will leave you unable to ever watch a football game—at any level—the same way again.”
—Brian Alexander, author of Glass House

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