All American: Why I Believe in Football, God, and the War in Iraq - Hardcover

McGovern, Robert

3.95

20 ratings by Goodreads

9780061227851: All American: Why I Believe in Football, God, and the War in Iraq

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061227854 ISBN 13: 9780061227851

Publisher: William Morrow, 2007

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Imagine what it's like to come face-to-face with a terrorist in a foreign courtroom—and you're the lawyer looking to put him away.

Imagine what it's like to see happy children in Iraq and Afghanistan smiling and waving at U.S. military helicopters.

Imagine what it's like to be an undersized linebacker in the National Football League, where most of the players you're supposed to tackle weigh more than you.

Imagine what it's like to be the seventh of nine kids growing up in an Irish Catholic family in the 1970s.

Imagine what it's like to be Robert McGovern, current captain in the U.S. Army, National Football League veteran, and proud member of a loving New Jersey family.

Robert McGovern has a story to tell—not about himself, although he's a part of it—but about the men and women he has called friends, mentors, and heroes. From his days in Catholic school to his years as a college and professional football player to his current career as an army judge advocate general, McGovern knows an all-American when he sees one. And in this book he introduces you to the ones he's met from all walks of life.

McGovern traded his shoulder pads for legal briefs more than a decade ago. He prosecuted drug dealers while working in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. On September 11, 2001, he was in lower Manhattan when the Twin Towers fell. After working the pile at Ground Zero, McGovern asked to be mobilized from his Army Reserve duty to active duty. He was first sent to Afghanistan, where he advised battlefield commanders on legal rules of engagement. He then went to Iraq to prosecute terrorist suspects. He returned from both tours convinced that Americans needed to hear another side of the war on terrorism—the side he saw firsthand.

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About the Author:

Robert P. McGovern, forty, was born in New Jersey just a few miles from the Meadowlands Sports Complex. After graduating from Holy Cross College, he surprised scouts and even himself by getting drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs. He made the team, and later played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots. After his NFL days were over, he attended Fordham University's law school, went to work as a prosecutor, and brought those legal skills with him when he was assigned as a judge advocate general in the U.S. Army's 18th Airborne Corps. He helped prosecute the notorious case of Sergeant Hasan Akbar, accused of killing two army comrades in Kuwait. After tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, McGovern is currently stationed in Virginia.

From Publishers Weekly:

God and football are justified by the author's Catholic education and his four-season stint as an NFL linebacker (with the Chiefs, Steelers and Patriots), full of gridiron pratfalls and hymns to teamwork, goal setting and perseverance. The war in Iraq is justified by his experiences as an army lawyer prosecuting terrorists and insurgents in Baghdad, which he elaborates with strident rhetoric—"we serve the cause for [sic] peace and life, while our enemy seeks only chaos and death"—and tendentious argument. McGovern's case is simplistic and one-sided. He blames the violence in Iraq entirely on foreign terrorists while ignoring the sectarian strife engulfing the country. He insists that Saddam was a "clear and present danger" who would have attacked America if he could. Instead of confronting critics of the Iraq War head-on, McGovern conflates them with unnamed straw men who allegedly want to coddle Osama bin Laden. It all merges into a manifesto, complete with broadsides denouncing drugs and supporting the death penalty, a touch of France-bashing and jockishly cloying salutes to lawyer colleagues ("Deep down inside, John is really just a big old Teddy bear"), revered coaches and other all-Americans. McGovern's stay-the-course cheerleading seems irrelevant to the agonizing quandaries confronting America in Iraq or the results of the recent elections. Photos. (Jan. 30)
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