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“Every year brings a Super Bowl, World Series, NBA, and
Stanley Cup champion. All are duly noted and celebrated. But a memorable few
have greater and more lasting resonance, a standing that excellence alone
cannot explain. The 1985 Chicago Bears were such a team, a mélange of talents
and outsized personalities that captivated and embodied a city. Rich Cohen
experienced it as an obsessed seventeen-year-old. Almost three decades on, he
remains obsessed—entertainingly and insightfully so, but obsessed nonetheless.
His combination of reporting and remembrance is by turns evocative, revealing,
quirky, and funny as hell—or at least as funny as Gary Fencik doing the Super
Bowl Shuffle.”
— Bob Costas
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“Monsters is a remarkable book, beautifully
written, but that’s beside the point. You think you’re going to read a football
book but you wind up reading about America, about who we are—you and me—and
even why. And Rich Cohen has accomplished this feat through portraits of some
of the greatest characters ever to have charged onto a football field and then
left it.”
— Ira Berkow, author and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter
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“For anyone from Chicago, or anyone with any sense, the ’85
Bears are the best team there ever was, and Rich Cohen has written the book
we’ve always wanted. It’s got all the people you want to hear from: Ditka,
McMahon, Singletary, Wilson, Fencik, and, thank God, the incomparable and
too-often-forgotten Doug Plank. This book—full of soul and searching and also
knock-you-down funny—is not just a great sports book, not just a great Chicago
book, but a great book, period.”
— Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author
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“A riveting account of one of football’s most iconic teams,
the 1985 Chicago Bears, features frank interviews with the players and
coaches.”
— People
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“Rich Cohen’s Monsters is the best book on
professional football I know—the best because the most truthful.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“As much as it is about the ’85 Bears, Monsters is
an emotional education of football and ‘the Stone Age pleasure of watching
large men battle to the point of exhaustion.’ At one point, Cohen attributes
Halas for the development of football’s emphasis on the passing game: ‘It was
Halas, as much as anyone, who invented the modern NFL offense and lifted the
game from the ground into the air.’ You can’t help but think that Cohen’s doing
the same thing here for sports narratives.”
— Grantland
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“Cohen, who grew up as a suburban Chicago Bears fan and witnessed firsthand the Bears’ victory when he was seventeen…is especially good at detailing the rivalry between coach Mike Ditka and his defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan…His fan’s perspective added to his excellent reporting and engrossing interviews produce great insights into the team’s colorful stars.”
— Publishers Weekly
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“Taylorson does what good narrators of memoirs and
nonfiction must do—convince listeners that he is channeling the author’s voice…And
give him credit for singing rather than reading a few bars of ‘Bear Down,
Chicago Bears.’ A fun title for football fans, especially those who bleed
Chicago Bears orange and blue.”
— Booklist (audio review)
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“The historical context enriches the book, as do Cohen’s
explanation of the team’s groundbreaking ‘46’ defense, his lively interviews
with principals, and his analyses of what went right with the team, and, in
subsequent years, what went wrong…Engaging.”
— Booklist
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“Entertaining…Cohen thankfully avoids sentimentality and
doesn’t bog readers down in lengthy game reports or analyses…Ideal for
Chicagoans, both casual and die-hard sports fans, and anyone who wonders, ‘What
happens when you have a dream and that dream comes true?’”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“The Chicago Bears are one of the most fascinating
franchises and compelling stories in football. From Mr. Halas to Mr. Ditka,
from the Fridge to McMahon, it’s been one of the wild rides of the NFL. Rich
Cohen has captured the spirit of a team and an era, its heart and mind, its
great triumphs. It’s a wonderful story filled with characters with character.
It doesn’t get any better.”
— Joe Theismann, Super Bowl–winning quarterback, Washington Redskins
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“Rich Cohen writes the best stuff—people, scenes, sentences,
drunks, big men, fine women, jokes, impressions, secrets—in America.”
— David Lipsky, author of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself
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“Rich Cohen wrote it his own bleeping way, and the result is
a monster of a book. I’m a Packers guy, but I respect the Bears, our oldest
rivals, and loved this book.”
— David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered
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“The triumphant and tragic saga of the 1985 Chicago Bears
and the aftermath of their historic championship season is a subject worthy of
epic poetry. In Rich Cohen, the Monsters of the Midway have found their bard.
Joyous yet mournful, inspirational yet irreverent, celebratory yet unsparing,
Cohen’s Monsters is an Aeneid for football lovers, blowin’ our
minds just like we knew it would.”
— Adam Langer, author of Crossing California