The Last Cowboy: A Life of Tom Landry
Tom Landry was the coach of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys for the team’s first 29 years, compiling an unprecedented 20 consecutive winning seasons and two Super Bowl championships. Landry laid the foundation for the modern NFL, using computers to help analyze player data, scouting small and historically black colleges, and instituting the now-common practice of having the coaches call the plays, among other innovations. Landry was viewed by players, coaches, fans, and the press as aloof, intellectual, and, more often than not, inscrutable. In 600-plus pages, Ribowsky does little to penetrate the veil. Despite exhaustive research, there is little insight into Landry the man, but there are endless and often fascinating details of his playing career, his time as a bomber copilot in WWII, and, of course, his three decades leading the Cowboys. Readers looking for insight into the private Landry will be disappointed; readers looking for a recap of one of football’s greatest innovators and coaches will be enthralled. --Wes Lukowsky