Carlisle vs. Army: Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football's Greatest Battle » (Reprint)

Lars Anderson is a Sports Illustrated staff writer and a graduate of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the author of The All Americans. He lives with his wife in Birmingham, Alabama.

In this stunning work of narrative nonfiction, Lars Anderson recounts one of college football’s greatest contests: Carlisle vs. Army, the fateful 1912 gridiron clash that had far-reaching implications both real and symbolic.

The story centers on three men: Glenn “Pop” Warner, who came to the Carlisle Indian School in 1903 and saw beyond its assimilationist agenda, molding the Carlisle Indians into a football juggernaut and smashing prejudices along the way; Jim Thorpe, who arrived at Carlisle as a troubled teenager–only to become one of America’s finest athletes, dazzling his opponents and gaining fans across the nation; and a hardnosed Kansan back named Dwight Eisenhower, who knew that by stopping Carlisle’s amazing winning streak, he could lead the Cadets of Army to glory. But beyond recounting the tale of this momentous match, Lars Anderson reveals its broader social and historical context, offering unique perspectives on sports and culture at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Filled with colorful period detail, Carlisle vs. Army gives a thrilling, authoritative account of the events of an epic afternoon whose reverberations would be felt for generations.

Praise for Carslisle vs. Army:

“Richly detailed and gracefully written . . . In an often overlooked football era, Anderson found a true Game of the Century.”
–Sports Illustrated

“[A] remarkable story . . . Carlisle vs. Army is about football the way that The Natural is about baseball.”
–Jeremy Schaap, author of Cinderella Man

“A great sports story, told with propulsive narrative drive . . . Anderson allows himself to get inside the heads of his characters, but as in the best sports-centered nonfiction (Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit and Frost’s Greatest Game Ever Played, for example), the technique is based on solid research.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“A masterly tale of the gridiron.”
–Neal Bascomb, author of Red Mutiny

“A magnificent story that’s as rich in American history as it is in sporting lore. Carlisle vs. Army is a dramatic and moving book, told with an unrelenting grace.”
–Adrian Wojnarowski, author of The Miracle of St. Anthony

“Gripping, inspiring coverage of three powerful forces’ unforgettable convergence: the sports version of The Perfect Storm.”
–Kirkus Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review

The Native American Ghost Dance was a days-long shamble/chant during which the dancers would wear "magical shirts" they believed made them "invulnerable to bullets." It scared the bejesus out of settlers. The dance was supposed to make the buffalo reappear and the white man vanish, but had the opposite effect. Settler freakouts due to the Ghost Dance led directly to the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee, in which more than 180 Native Americans were killed by U.S. soldiers.

In a football game only 22 years later, the Army Cadets of West Point faced off against the powerhouse Carlisle (Pa.) Indian School, one of many institutions set up at the turn of the century to help Indian kids become part of the mainstream culture (read: whiteyville). Carlisle was founded by Richard Pratt, who described the mission of his school as "Save the man, kill the Indian." The school's football and track teams had the luck of being coached by Glenn "Pop" Warner, one of the most creative minds in football history. Many early innovations of the game -- the spiral pass, shoulder pads, the three-point crouch -- came from Warner, who built Carlisle's Indian footballers into a nasty squad that was happy to "scalp" any "palefaces" that came their way, as the newspapers of the day liked to say. These Indians were more than mainstreamed when it came to football; they had mastered the white man's game.

The Thrill of Possibility     3
Shot Like Buffalo     9
Pop Learns From Ma     19
The Trickiest Play     41
What an Indian Can Do     77
There's Just no Future in the Army     105
He Is Certainly a Wild Indian     131
A Couple of Well-Paid Amateurs     167
A Brutal, Savage, Murderous Sport     185
Beast Barracks and a Beast on the Field     197
A Real American If There Ever Was one     225
Chief Thorpe and the Huge Kansan     251
The Clash of Heroes     277
The Dead Indian and Another Wounded Knee     295
Epilogue: The Ghosts of Carlisle     313
Acknowledgments     321
A Note on Sources     323
Notes     325
Index     337