LT: Over the Edge: Tackling Quarterbacks, Drugs, and a World Beyond Football - Hardcover

Taylor, Lawrence; Serby, Steve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060185511 ISBN 13: 9780060185510

Publisher: Harper, 2003

Synopsis

On the football field, he was an explosive force; a mold- breaking and bone-crushing linebacker who wreaked havoc on offenses each Sunday. But off the field, the fury that made Lawrence Taylor a Hall of Fame player put him on a runaway blitz to self-destruction.

LT:: Over the Edge is a smash-mouth memoir by one of the game's greatest players, an unsparing look at the giant of all Giants whose struggle with a cocaine habit was the only thing in his life he couldn't tackle with ease.

Raw and uncut, Taylor tells of his life from a small townin Virginia to becoming the most dominant defensive player of all time. Through a record ten straight All-Pro seasons, LT led the New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories, along the way revolutionizing the outside linebacker position. But the bright lights of Giants Stadium were nothing compared to the even brighter lights of New York City, where the King of the NFL held court all night long, fueled by booze, drugs, sex, and his own sense of invincibility.

Twice suspended from the league for substance abuse, Taylor walked away from the white lines of the football field to the far more alluring white lines of New York drug culture. Not one week after his retirement in 1993, he was on vacation and binging on coke. And so began an endless blur of years of all-nighters, prostitutes, and crippling paranoia that ended his marriage and very nearly cost him his life. But after several arrests, with the Hall of Fame beckoning, Lawrence Taylor finally stared down his toughest opponent -- himself -- entered rehab, and got clean. In 1999, in his first year of eligibility, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame -- the man who had raised hell on and off the field had lived through it all.

Filled with intimate and revealing stories from his teammates, coaches, family, and friends, LT: Over the Edge will forever change the way you look at the game of football and the indomitable Lawrence Taylor.

About this title

About the Authors

Lawrence Taylor now divides his time between Florida and New Jersey.

Steve Serby is a columnist for the New York Post.

From the Back Cover

On the football field, he was an explosive force; a mold- breaking and bone-crushing linebacker who wreaked havoc on offenses each Sunday. But off the field, the fury that made Lawrence Taylor a Hall of Fame player put him on a runaway blitz to self-destruction.

LT:: Over the Edge is a smash-mouth memoir by one of the game's greatest players, an unsparing look at the giant of all Giants whose struggle with a cocaine habit was the only thing in his life he couldn't tackle with ease.

Raw and uncut, Taylor tells of his life from a small townin Virginia to becoming the most dominant defensive player of all time. Through a record ten straight All-Pro seasons, LT led the New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories, along the way revolutionizing the outside linebacker position. But the bright lights of Giants Stadium were nothing compared to the even brighter lights of New York City, where the King of the NFL held court all night long, fueled by booze, drugs, sex, and his own sense of invincibility.

Twice suspended from the league for substance abuse, Taylor walked away from the white lines of the football field to the far more alluring white lines of New York drug culture. Not one week after his retirement in 1993, he was on vacation and binging on coke. And so began an endless blur of years of all-nighters, prostitutes, and crippling paranoia that ended his marriage and very nearly cost him his life. But after several arrests, with the Hall of Fame beckoning, Lawrence Taylor finally stared down his toughest opponent -- himself -- entered rehab, and got clean. In 1999, in his first year of eligibility, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame -- the man who had raised hell on and off the field had lived through it all.

Filled with intimate and revealing stories from his teammates, coaches, family, and friends, LT: Over the Edge will forever change the way you look at the game of football and the indomitable Lawrence Taylor.

Reviews

In this slapdash effort, former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor and a supporting cast of characters recall the football legend's career and personal struggle with drug addiction. On the field, Taylor was universally regarded as the greatest defensive football player in the game's history. His size, speed and ferocity led the Giants to two Super Bowl championships in 1986 and 1990, and earned Taylor an exalted place in NFL folklore, as well as in the record books and in the Football Hall of Fame. All this for a player, readers learn, who rarely worked out, practiced lazily and played many of his awe-inspiring games hungover. While he was succeeding on the field, off the field Taylor's life was out of control. He was addicted to cocaine and to a hard-partying lifestyle that eventually led to a divorce, numerous arrests, financial ruin and employment prospects that sunk as low as professional wrestling. Although billed as an autobiography, the book (written with New York Post columnist Serby) is more an oral history, interweaving Taylor's remembrances with those of former teammates, coaches, sports writers and friends. While there are some memorable anecdotes and a few intimate glimpses, there is surprisingly little new here for Taylor fans beyond the depressing details of his most recent travails. That's unfortunate-underneath it all, Taylor' is a truly rich, compelling story. He remains a larger-than-life personality, and one who made extraordinary football history in one of the NFL's most colorful eras. Still, in this, his second shot at autobiography (his first was LT: Living on the Edge in 1987), the true substance of Lawrence Taylor goes woefully unexamined.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060185511
• ISBN 13: 9780060185510
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272