LT: Over the Edge

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.

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

Steve Serby is a columnist for the New York Post.