Release Date:- 2013-10-08
Reviews Counts:- 69
User Average Rating:- 4
Availability:- In Stock
Kind:- ebook
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ā¢ A āmeticulously documented and endlessly chillingā (The New York Times) exploration of the NFLās decades-long attempt to deny and cover up mounting evidence connecting football and brain damage.
āA first-rate piece of reporting [that] adds crucial detail, texture, and news to the concussion story, which despite the NFLās best efforts, isnāt going away.āāTime
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR
āProfessional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.ā So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in Americaās most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of playersāincluding some of the all-time greatsāto madness.
Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didnāt knowāand what the league sought to shield from themāis that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football.
In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru expose the public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields and examine how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed researchāa campaign with echoes of Big Tobaccoās fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. They chronicle the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of a scientific battle between researchers and the NFL.
Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private e-mails, League of Denial is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew itāquestions at the heart of a crisis that threatens American footballāand of the battle for the sportās future.