Reading Guides

Football and Brain Trauma – Recommended Books

Football Brain Trauma Books

As the Super Bowl draws near, the books on this reading list challenge us to take critical look at football and the brain trauma many players have experienced …

I used to be a big football fan, often spending large chunks of my Sundays enjoying NFL games. But the more I heard and read about brain injuries and trauma, the less enthused I was about the sport. Today I rarely watch a full game, and have mostly lost interest in the sport.

Here’s some excellent books that present the research on brain injuries and tell the stories of former football players: 


Football Brain Trauma Books

1) League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth

Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru

(Three Rivers Press)

“PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYERS DO NOT SUSTAIN FREQUENT REPETITIVE BLOWS TO THE BRAIN ON A REGULAR BASIS.”
So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s 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: A chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players — including some of the all-time greats — to madness.

League of Denial reveals how the NFL, over a period of nearly two decades, sought to cover up and deny mounting evidence of the connection between football and brain damage.

Comprehensively, and for the first time, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru tell the story of a public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields of our 21st century pastime. Everyone knew that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know – and what the league sought to shield from them – is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football; that the very essence of the game could be exposing these players to brain damage.

In a fast-paced narrative that moves between the NFL trenches, America’s research labs and the boardrooms where the NFL went to war against science, League of Denial examines how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research — a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It chronicles 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 Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of an unseemly scientific battle between researchers and the NFL. Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents and private emails, this is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it – questions at the heart of crisis that threatens football, from the highest levels all the way down to Pop Warner.



 

NEXT BOOK >>>>>
Book 1 of 10








 
RFTCG
FREE EBOOK!
Reading for the Common Good
From ERB Editor Christopher Smith


"This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church."
-Karen Swallow Prior


Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook!
We respect your email privacy


In the News...
Christian Nationalism Understanding Christian Nationalism [A Reading Guide]
Most AnticipatedMost Anticipated Books of the Fall for Christian Readers!
Funny Bible ReviewsHilarious One-Star Customer Reviews of Bibles


Comments are closed.