American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback

by Seth Wickersham

Pull back the curtain on the most powerful position in all of sports. The New York Times bestselling author of It's Better to be Feared examines football's QB high school, college, the NFL, retirement—and all that comes with it.
"A MUST BUY" — New York Times / The Athletic
A Boston Globe and NPR pick for Best Books of 2025
New York Book Festival • General Nonfiction Winner
*** The Instant New York Times bestseller ***
"An instant classic—not just a great sports book but a great cultural history."
—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Life
The the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized, and worshipped. Still, long before the Super Bowl trophies, massive contracts, brand deals, and millions of social media followers comes the dream. From the backyard to Pop Warner, from high school to college, from the NFL to the Hall of Fame, becoming the country's ultimate idol requires single-minded focus while navigating a maze of bad breaks, insecurities, jealousy, pressure, and fame.
Long known as the outsider's guide into this elite world, Seth Wickersham's fresh reporting goes deep into the quarterback journey, measuring the distance between what the men who have traveled it expected and what they found at the end of the road. Through unprecedented access into the lives of dozens of quarterbacks and generational greats such as Johnny Unitas, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Warren Moon, Steve Young, and others, as well as those figures striving to be remembered, like Caleb Williams and Arch Manning, Wickersham reveals how this one position has become emblematic of success in American life.
As an inside look into a uniquely American job and a uniquely American obsession with football, American Kings is a must-read for sports fans and anyone who wants to understand what the price of ambition tells us about the quest for achievement and status.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Football, History, American History, Business, Biography

395 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 9, 2025

Reviews

[Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

In today’s professional football, the quarterback is the lifeblood of his team. While the evolution of the position resulted in him being important decades ago, that importance has been magnified recently. This book by Seth Wickersham explores the timeline of this process through stories about quarterbacks through different eras.

It should be noted that not all of the stories revolve around quarterbacks in the NFL. There are those who hope to become great at the position such as Colin Hurley and Arch Manning. There’s a fairly new NFL quarterback included in Caleb Williams. If one goes way back, there are quarterback stories before the position was considered “glorious.” The first quarterback portrayed who may fit that profile is Bob Waterford - but even there, while he was a Hall of Fame quarterback, his wife as just as famous - Jane Russell, the glamorous actress of that time.

The stories of all the quarterbacks portrayed, even stars like John Elway and Steve Young, take sad turns which was a title disconcerting while reading the book. I also found it hard to follow as the stories bounced from one quarterback to another. Having a chapter on each one in chronological order would have been my preference. The same goes when Wickersham inserts his own stories when he played the position. They were interesting and did provide substance to the theme - just would have been better as it’s own chapter.

Football fans who want to hear stories about players in the vital role will enjoy the stories. But treat the book as such - a collection of stories. I expected something different and it did not turn out that way.

I wish to thank Hyperion Avenue for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.

https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.5/5)

Went in wondering how the author intended to write an entire book out of what seemed to be a fairly thin premise, came out convinced that not only is this the best sports book of the year, it's possibly the best sports book of the decade so far.

It encompasses just about everything I love about sportswriting: it captures the feel of a game while also brilliantly exploring the surrounding circumstances, it does a great job of examining the larger cultural and even societal impact of what a quarterback is supposed to be and what that means to us, and it even manages to pack an emotional punch in a few of the many narratives it so effectively juggles.

I'm just completely blown away by this one, and cannot wait to handsell it to every dad that walks through my bookstore's doors for the foreseeable future.

[Justin Bitner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many thanks to NetGalley for the eARC of this book.

As a lifelong football fan, I really wanted to like this one more than I did. While there are lots of interesting stories about the personal struggles and triumphs of some of the NFL's most revered players, the pacing feels like (to use a football metaphor) a team gets into the red zone and then immediately punts the ball. Wickersham sets up interesting little cliffhangers of stories, but he is juggling so many different threads that by the time you get back to it, you aren't even sure who he is talking about.

Form aside, the content is great and a peek behind the curtain across the decades. I liked that it didn't focus too sharply on any single era, and I'm sure there are thousands and thousands more stories that could have been told.

A good read to get ready for football season, but not an all-timer for me.

[Dave Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was well titled as a "biography" of the quarterback, not a history of the quarterback. It covers a wide range of football history, and nearly all of the great QBs get at least a reference. But the book's content concerns the mythology and allure of the position as the most important in the country's most popular sport, much more than the evolution of the position itself. It focuses on a number of quarterbacks past, present and, in one case, future. The first section of the book was a bit jarring as the author shifted between many stories set at different points of the players' careers or post-careers. But the thread starts to flow more logically in the second section especially and then more consistently through the rest of the book. At that point, even as he switches between subjects, the shifts make more sense, or perhaps you know these individuals better and it's easier to toggle between them in your mind. The storytelling is excellent, and the reporting goes in depth into their pasts and their minds to help you know these players and the pressure they face.

[Chris McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was not exactly what I thought it would be from the description on the jacket, but it ended up being pretty great. It delved into the idea of being a quarterback, with tons of interviews with some of the greats. It leaned heavily on John Elway and Warren Moon, but touched on just about every great quarterback from recent times. It also touched on the earliest passers who changed the nature of the position, Benny Friedman, Sammy Baugh, and a lot of Bob Waterfield. It juxtaposed these established greats with up an comers Colin Hurley of LSU and Arch Manning, who was just a Texas commit when the book was written. Wickersham also talked to several other quarterbacks of various levels of success to talk about the idea of what makes up a quarterback, how they're different from other players, both on and off the field.

[Jared McNeill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I'm fascinated by history in all its forms. Plus, I count myself as a big football fan. So, when I found out about this book, I knew I eventually wanted to read it.

I'm glad I did. I found the history and the mix of yesterday and today (Bob Waterfield and YA Tittle and Johnny Unitas to Elway and Marino and Moon to the famed QB Class of 2024 to Arch Manning) fascinating.

I loved the in-depth look into what made QBs tick and their lives outside of the game that made them legends.

Wonderful read.

[David Gramley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing style wasn’t what I had expected. Instead of one quarterback at a time by chapter, he has interspersed multiple QBs short bits at a time. I grew to like this format. The deepest dive was possibly John Elway. But he covered players from farther back - Waterfield and Tittle - and others still in college or early pros such as Arch Manning and Caleb Williams. I like that this was not so much about physical skills as it was about their life in and out of football. All in all a very interesting pol especially with playoffs underway.

[Tyler Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked learning about some of the old time guys like Tittle and Namath, especially in contrast to the new age guys like Arch and Caleb Williams.

4/5 since I didn’t live the constant toggling back and forth between story lines. I would have preferred a chapter on each.

Ultimately it’s a pretty sad story. All these guys get pretty messed up in different ways.

[Thomas Musial · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sports are just reality tv for men but this was a fun tabloid

[Tim Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read this year.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became a fan of Seth Wickersham’s sports writing after reading his definitive book on the New England Patriots dynasty, It’s Better to Be Feared. My attention span wasn’t the best during the COVID times, but I simply could not put that book down when it came out in 2021. I’ll bet I read all 528 pages in two or three sittings. So, of course, I was excited when Wickersham announced American Kings, an in-depth exploration into the world of the quarterback. The book is the result of years of interviews Wickersham conducted specifically for this book, as well as decades of talking with and befriending historical icons and up-and-comers.

As the title gives away, Wickersham views the quarterback as holding a unique kind of gilded celebrity and status in America. QB is a difficult and almost mystical position in sports. He is a field general, coach, press secretary, homecoming king, snake-oil salesman, egomaniac, and lunatic.

To try and understand what makes a quarterback great, Wickersham interviews decades’ worth of QBs and their families, from Y.A. Tittle to Arch Manning. He identifies several categories of things that quarterbacks seem to have in common: quick processing, leadership, extreme confidence, selfishness, total focus, and obsession.

As you can see from the list, these aren’t all qualities that are widely considered to be healthy or even desirable in “real” life. Perhaps that is why so many quarterbacks struggle in the “real” world and after retirement. When the thing that defines you is gone, and what made you successful is now poisonous, what do you do?

Wickersham does not sugarcoat the cost of becoming an icon. Specifically, he highlights the cost of football to the families of QB Bob Waterfield and actress Jane Russell. Waterfield and Russell were one of the first L.A. “it” couples that combined sports and Hollywood. Waterfield had a drinking problem, leading his children to ask his parents NOT to get back together when they considered remarriage. Wickersham also talks to Joe Namath, John Elway, and others who developed drinking problems and struggled with marriage. And Tom Brady, whose life has changed considerably since Wickersham’s 2021 book.

And what about those who never make icon status? He talks about how rough it is on QBs like Matt Ryan, who was good but never quite great. And the pressures on thousands of young players who are going through the QB-industrial-complex of personal coaches, camps, Elite 11, etc. This kind of attention “is a breeding ground for entitled young men who expect the world to revolve around them.” Wickersham observes. A long-time Elite 11 veteran puts it more bluntly: The complex is creating a collection of “little a**holes.”

After looking at decades of quarterbacks, Wickersham and I were both unable to figure out what makes some exit the game gracefully. Some have religion, some have family, some have new careers. But plenty of quarterbacks have those things and fail. So what’s the difference? I don’t know.

This book was enjoyable, but I do wish it were a little longer. It’s about 100 pages shorter than Wickersham’s previous book, and I think going a little deeper on existing subjects or adding a couple of new topics would have made this the read of the year for me. Still, I recommend this book for any football fan, or anyone interested in the relationship of obsession and greatness (think Whiplash).

I received a digital copy of Quarterback from Hyperion Avenue for review consideration via NetGalley. This review and the opinions in it are my own. Also, I never played quarterback.

[Josh Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. If you love football — or are interested in it why it matters beyond surface level stuff — I highly recommend this. (Also I have an interview with Seth coming on this week’s I-80 Football Show!)

9/10

[Tom Donaghey · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback (2025) by Seth Wickersham. This is a great look into what it takes to be a primer quarterback as seen through those who have dominated the position from pee wee games through to the Super Bowl Along the way we are given interviews of the greats, and those who are struggling on the path. every high school QB has dreams of making t to the pinnacle of the game, and some dedicate their lives to it, but as we see in the book and as we know in real life, quite often dreams do not come true.
I could give a list of the QBs talked of and talked with that appear throughout, but if you like football at all you’ll want to dive into this fascinating story without the impetus of dancing you favorite back like a carrot.
The book may read as uneven to some readers, following one story line part way switching to others and then coming back to pick it again. I found this a great assist in getting the various concepts the author was attempting to put for. Also it allowed a greater degree of contrast between the stars who inhabit the pages.
From Peyton, Johnny U, and Warren Moon and Bob Waterfield, Y.A. Tittle, Steve Young and Montana and a host of others, this book speaks to and of them all. QB might be the most glamorous position in all of sports, but it as also the most fraught with mental demons. At what point does the player step back and admit they are great at what they do, or do they always struggle with the need for perfection that was probably handed down to them from their parents (think Dad in most cases.
This look into what made the greats great, what distinguished them from the others while displaying the anguish that came with it all. By reading this you may get a better grip on what their journeys have been, But don’t feel too bad for them. At any point they could have got out of the process, decided the cost was too much to pay, and led less exciting lives always wondering “What if…”
A must read for any football fan, on just a general fan of sports. Well written with deep inside looks to the players of the past, present and future, I am certain you will receive a great benefit.

[TJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Seth Wickersham takes a deep dive into the lives of professional, college, and even high school quarterbacks. There are a high number of familiar names for football fans to sort through in this book. Men like Steve Young, Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Caleb Williams, Arch Manning, and John Elway, just to name a few. Wickersham exposes the stress, celebrity, and internal pressure to win, with all of the pluses and minuses of being a player in the limelight.
The book is well written and has many interesting anecdotes that should provide plenty of new information on these men.
The only negatives that I can address with the book were the constant jumping around from QB to QB from paragraph to paragraph, and the author's decision to include too much of his personal experiences as a quarterback.
Other than those minor criticisms, the book is a fine look into the world of football's most important player. While maybe not a great selection for those unfamiliar with the aforementioned names, true fans of the sport should delight in the book.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Hyperion Avenue for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Remarkably well-researched. At first, I thought the book was very confused: rather than telling a linear history of the quarterback, or focusing on various themes relating to quarterbacks by examining particular players or moments, Wickersham weaves together various storylines throughout without any real overarching reason. This might seem to detract from the book: how am I supposed to care about Steve Young's story when it is told through a series that stops and starts over 400-some-odd pages?

The point, I think, is that we are not supposed to care about Steve Young's story. The book is not a history of the quarterback or of quarterbacks, but a biography. It's subject is *the* quarterback, not various quarterbacks. The weaving together and obfuscation of various individual narratives is in service of precisely this point: we are learning about a mythical figure, the figure of the quarterback. Individual quarterbacks are included only insofar as they help us glean the true subject.

The worry one might have is that the whole idea---the myth---of *the* quarterback is apocryphal. This is a tension internal to the text, insofar as some of the quarterbacks---Colin Hurley and Arch Manning especially---hardly fit into the traditional figure of the quarterback that we can glean from the study of Bob Waterfield, Joe Namath, and John Elway, among others. The story of *the* quarterback we get from this historical examination is of a person obsessive and controlling to sociopathic extents. The Quarterback's excellence can be traced to these features: it is because the Quarterback is so obsessed, and so controlling that they are able to succeed, to be the Quarterback. However, this doesn't seem to fit the portraits of Arch and Colin as Wickersham paints them. While they play quarterback, they don't seem to be Quarterbacks (in this sense). (Indeed, it seems like the most Quarterback-y figure we get in the current era is the father of the quarterback: Charlie Hurley and Carl Williams especially.)

Nor is the idea of the quarterback that we get something to be admired. What we learn is that this sort of obsession and controlling nature of the quarterback leads to their own downfall (variously as depression, substance abuse and familial issues). What apparently allowed for the quarterback to succeed on the gridiron is the reason why he fails to live well off of it.

If this is what being a quarterback is, and what is requires, one would hope the lesson from the book would be that no one should aspire to be a Quarterback. But, thankfully, the book also paints---more subtly---a picture of the Quarterback that is more contained within the painted white lines. The quarterback, here, is someone who possesses a sort of sixth sense, an unarticulated mastery over the game that can be sensed, if not understood by those around them. These are the Steve Youngs and Joe Montanas of the quarterback world. To be a quarterback in this sense is to be tapped into a sort of hidden grammar, to simply get it. This is hardly something one can aspire to, although it is surely something one can admire. While some are relegated to a sort of mechanistic or rote mastery of the position, others speak the language, able to leap beyond any articulated rules or customs and make magic. This Quarterback is not opposed to the other---quarterbacking is an art that can be learned and requires the sort of dedication and self-mastery one might admire in the other Quarterback---but is in itself much more of an aesthetic than an ethical character. To be a quarterback in this sense is a more a matter of art than it is a way of living. While we might not learn much from these quarterbacks, the provide the opportunity of disinterested admiration that is characteristic of true beauty.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talk about ambitious. What could have been another fairly decent inside-baseball (which somehow seems to have retained the metaphorical gravity here over "inside football") account of the 2024 draft instead becomes a meditation on the cultural presence and meaning of the quarterback in the modern king-of-the-city sense, from its origins in, he says, Bob Waterfield's celebrity for the 50s 40s/50s Rams through Unitas and Namath and then all of the recent avatars, including the para-world of QB camps and QB whisperers, the draft processes of Caleb Williams and Drake Maye, and the navigations of younger players just getting into college. The whole closing section, which explores the literally/figuratively painful after-the-glory part of the story, is the most poignant, in that it has to be an enormous comedown not to be able to bask in such a glowing limelight any more. (Fascinating range here: Y.A. Tittle seems to have relished being a husband and father, whereas Waterfield kept trying to fill that void with drinking and women and eventually, unexpectedly, pool, and Namath seems to have found, at long last, some equilibrium.) It's possible to read this as diagnosing the long recovery process suffered by victims of a central American pathology that puts them among the most lionized figures in our culture and then keeps them addicted to a kind of morphine drip of celebrity ever after.

Wickersham must have an astonishing ability to get people to open up. He unearths raw honesty from Steve Young and John Elway and Warren Moon in particular about their anxieties, insecurities, ability to seize the moment and the role, even at the top of their games, and then the struggle to live happily ever after. Even Tom Brady comes across as relatively human, which is probably the best you can do. He's a sportswriter, so this was never going to be a full cultural history, but I wanted to know when and how that figure became so emblematic culturally (Exley's A Fan's Notes is fixated on Frank Gifford, who was a halfback; in All the Right Moves, Tom Cruise plays DB; and of course OJ was a cross-platform, racially neutral commercial figure for 25 years before what everyone knows him for now)--is it Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard? Warren Beatty in Heaven Can Wait? Certainly by the run of 90s fb movies, the QB is automatically one of the central narrative figures, whether it's Remember the Titans or Varsity Blues. I would also have loved some reporting from outside the QB bubble on how today's college student treats and understands the QB; I shared the UM campus with Jim Harbaugh for two years, and the only sighting I ever had was when a friend of a friend met him at a party, where he tried to pick her up with the immortal line, "Do you know who I am?" (Didn't work, for the record.)

Not my dream cultural history of the position (like, were there bits in the Forward about Benny Friedman? I dearly hope that the paper covered NY football at some point, ideally in Yiddish), then, but a very good mix of reporting, pondering, imagining about, to quote Jim Bouton, how quarterbacks spend their lives gripping a football and in the end it turns out it was the other way around all the time.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

The publicity surrounding AMERICAN KINGS started several months ago. In Chicago, home of my beloved Bears, ESPN suggested that Caleb Williams, who had been the first player selected in the 2024 NFL Draft, was so concerned about playing for the franchise “where quarterbacks go to die” that he and his father considered ways to avoid that possibility and subvert the draft itself. Based in part on this small nugget of promotional material, I knew the book would be on my late-summer reading list.

Seth Wickersham reports that the Heisman-winning quarterback did not bypass the draft. He signed with the Bears and is now beginning his second season with the team. Williams is just one character in this exceptional saga detailing football history, where the quarterback has evolved into an integral part of the sport.

Millions of dollars and infinite amounts of time are invested in that one position. But for every player scouted and highly coveted by NFL teams, there are still many who don’t become star players. Since 2000, 69 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round; 37 of them have been failures. On the other hand, a number of players who are deemed to be undeserving of major investment eventually find themselves wearing Super Bowl rings and enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame. No one can explain how or why that happens.

Wickersham makes it clear that the quarterback is the most worshipped position in all of sports. At first, it began as a method for placing an additional blocker in the backfield for running plays. In the early days, there were only two ways to advance the ball: running and kicking. Later, changes in the football itself and the rules of the game would allow for the ball to be thrown down the field. Enter the quarterback and modern football coaches who revolutionized how the game would be played.

Wickersham has assembled for readers a wide cast of quarterbacks. They range from the great pioneers of the position --- from Benny Friedman, who modernized professional quarterbacking, and Bob Waterfield, whose Hollywood life helped glamorize the game, to such legends as Y.A. Tittle, Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath.

The book then moves to the era of quarterback development, including the NFL quarterback class of the 1983 draft, where six quarterbacks --- three of whom would be inducted into the Hall of Fame --- were selected in the first round. Ironically, the final quarterback picked in that round, Dan Marino, still holds many NFL records. But he never won a Super Bowl, which tarnishes his career accomplishments. As Wickersham observes, “time erodes records but championships last forever.”

I cannot think of a better book to kick off this football season or to put on your holiday list. AMERICAN KINGS is a sports classic on ambition, achievement and failure for every football fan in America.

Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

[Arpeet Kamdar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I am usually skeptical towards most sports books, I decided to pick this up because of my Chicago Bears fandom and the headlines that were made before the 2024 draft claiming that Caleb and Carl Williams didn't want to be drafted to Chicago. This book elaborated on some of those headlines, and ultimately clarified a few things as well. This book did do a good job of presenting real stories and conversations, and it was interesting to see the insight provided to the lives of those who played the most difficult position in all of sports. And being a sports fan, I did enjoy some of these stories and viewpoints. I also liked that the book discussed teenage quarterbacks going through the high school and prep circuits, current NFL quarterbacks, and NFL quarterbacks that retired long ago and are currently doing different things in life.

I did have a few gripes with this book, and the first one has nothing to do with the fact that it was a sports book. I thought the pace and structure of this book were somewhat awkward. There are only a handful of "chapters" in this 400 page read, but each chapter is divided into sections that vary in length from a couple paragraphs to a couple pages. Each section discusses a different quarterback, thus different characters. These transitions between sections weren't logically established, and there weren't any parallels to the experiences mentioned. The book just seems like a dozen or so stories that were mashed together with no rhyme or reason.

Another gripe I have with this book is that the author refused to acknowledge unacceptable behavior from the quarterbacks discussed, and instead he attributed domestic violence, alcoholism, or cheating on a spouse to the territory that comes with being a quarterback. While I acknowledge that quarterbacks are under intense pressure and scrutiny at all times, it's brain dead to give these actions a pass. It's an unfortunate reality that our society refuses to hold the rich and famous accountable for their actions simply because they achieved success in a highly visible industry.

My final gripe with this book is that it was written like a newspaper sports opinion article, and it was a bit corny. Everything seems to work out so well for the quarterbacks discussed, and even when they face some adversity, things still eventually work out perfectly. Perhaps it would have been beneficial to discuss a quarterback failure to give the reader a more realistic view. The writing tone isn't a surprise, as Seth Wickersham is an ESPN journalist.

I don't feel like this book was a waste of time, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone unless they enjoy sports books or are interested in some media headline that was generated by this book. And if the latter is the case, then it's perfectly fine to just read the sections that pertain to that media headline.

[John H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. As someone who once LOVED the NFL and has long since lost interest in the league for a lot of the oft repeated reasons, I found this book to be a perspective changer. I still dislike a lot of the aspects of professional football, and this book did not make me more a team fan, but I will watch and follow the game differently than before. It offers a great insight into how the top level professional QBs are different than the rest of us, and it is not just athletic ability. Nor do I envy them or want to change positions. Sometimes things are known, and we can nod our head thinking we understand, and then, here, in this example, it is presented so well and so thoroughly that it really sinks in. Professional QBs who are at the top of their game (and I am assuming that many other successful pro athletes share the same trait as highlighted in this book about NFL QBs) want to win and they will exclude all other distractions to do it. They are 100% in. I mean 100% in, to the exclusion of family, friends, social norms, etc. When you find someone like Steve Young, who I think is a genuinely decent person, he is still a competitive bastard on the inside, but he strives to be humble. Those two traits are not mutually exclusive, but if you want to reach that level that he reached, then you have to be 100% in. The author chose extreme outliers: all were top picks out of high school, or in the first round draft (except Brady) or became the #1 Super Bowl champion or MVP, or near misses. These are stories of very high level performers, not the 2nd string guys or even the best of the rest. It is no wonder that so many of them have problems off the field after retiring; they have never lived like regular human beings, and they matter because they compete. When the competition goes away, they no longer matter...unless they find some way to matter again.
Also, I think the stories about the dads are very interesting. The QB dads in the story are also 100% in. It makes me wonder whether the parents who emphasize playing sports for enjoyment have it wrong. The Norwegian way is what I believe in, but maybe it is because I just want it to be true. I want kids to enjoy sports and athletic activities, not be 100% consumed by it. However, maybe the kids themselves who have the genes & demeanor to develop high level talent really want the all-in approach. Maybe some kids are missing their calling if they are coached by the well-rounded developer of whole-person type of coach?
Regardless, I sort of loved this book and sort of hated it because I don't like the people. I don't like the hubris, the self-centeredness, the condescension and put downs to others in their club, but I have to consider whether I don't like them because I don't see the light, because my naivete about the world and belief that it is about the journey is just plain wrong.

[Mike Cheng · Rating 2 out of 5]

The quarterback may very well be America’s most awesome job title. Sports journalist and author Seth Wickersham ( It’s Better to Be Feared, 4/5 stars) opens with a personal anecdote about his brief time as a junior varsity QB and his lifelong regerts over switching positions in order to play on the varsity team. From there Mr. Wickersham goes deep about several QB legends as well as a few up and comers, haphazardly jumping from QB to QB throughout the book’s five lengthy chapters. Among the legends are John Elway (a professional career constantly shadowed by unfathomable expectations), Warren Moon (overcoming a time of prejudice against Black QBs), UCLA great Bob Waterfield (the ramifications of lifestyle on marriage and family), Steve Young (the pressure of having huge shoes to fill), and the contrast between Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath (beyond just their antagonistic hairstyles). The up and comers are primarily Caleb Williams (the man becoming a business and his father Carl’s reservations about being drafted by the Chicago Bears) and Arch Manning (the upside of being the heir apparent in football’s royal family). While it is clear from the jump how much Mr. Wickersham reveres the position as well as its greats, imo the book would have benefitted from a better description what is required to succeed today at the position - more so than generic references to obsession, work ethic, intelligence, and physical gifts.
*Here’s what I mean by what I thought was missing - One of my favorite football writers is Peter King, who penned an article for SI in 2015: [https://www.si.com/nfl/2015/11/18/nfl...]
providing a sliver of insight into what Carson Palmer’s preparation looked like, by way of example through a single play (among hundreds). Pistol Strong Right Stack Act 6 Y Cross Divide based on 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end):
Pistol means the QB takes the snap four yards behind center (a short shotgun).
Strong Right tells the fullback to line up on the strong side of the ball (where the tight end is, in this case the right side).
Stack refers to two wide receivers lining up in a stack (one behind the other) on the left side.
Act 6 describes the protection, and in the event of a blitz the running back and fullback are respectively assigned to the middle / weak side, and the strong side.
Y Cross Divide are the routes of the stacked wide receivers. The slot receiver (the Y) runs a deep cross and hopes to drag a safety with him. The split end receiver (the X) runs a stutter and go, faking to the sideline and then sprinting downfield.

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Call it a triumph of access journalism. Wickersham is a well established writer for ESPN and the New York Times whose been writing about the NFL long enough to have developed plenty of solid contacts. He uses that here to get access to tons of prominent QBs and get their thoughts and life experiences. He interviews all sorts. He has legends from my childhood like Steve Young, John Elway, and Warren Moon. He has hopefuls Caleb Williams (actually, it's more his dad Carl), and Colin Hurley. He intereviews relatives of long ago QBs Bob Porterfield, Johnny Unitas, and Y. A. Tittle (well, he also spoke to Tittle before he passed away). He gets to every Manning you can shake a stick at. (Looking back, it's interesting how it's almost all former and future QBs. I guess the current guys are too busy QB-ing).

Are you looking for some big takeaways or Grand Theory of QB-dom? Sorry. Mostly, it's a bunch of stories of various QBs, with a bit of added bonus that the different generations of QBs give it more perspective than it otherwise would.

The one concern I always have with access journalism: it can easily lead to be glorified advertising. He gets access in return for non-critical looks at them. Seth isn't quite Johnny Rah-Rah! here, but all throughout one thing bugged me in the back of my mind. A few months ago, I read Turf Wars by former NFLPA head DeMaurce Smith. He notes at one point how Wickersham wrote a blatant piece of watercarrying for the NFL owners at a key moment of CBA negotiations .... and then shortly after he got a book deal to tell the inside story of Robert Kraft's Patriots dynasty. So I kept thinking of that here and Wickersham, say, gladhands away the sexual harrassment allegation against Warren Moon.

A good book if you want to read stories about QBs. Don't expect much more than that.

Final nitpick time: there are some dumb errors. At one point, he notes the female:male ratio at LSU is 54:44. Hmmmm.... Another time he notes how Johnny U convered on a 3-and-15 with a nice eight-yard pass.

[Giana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been anxious for the start of football season (what does one even do from February to September?), and a friend trying to get into football recently asked why some have declared quarterback to be the most difficult position in all of sports. So when I saw this title up for grabs, I requested it immediately. I was expecting a history of the position, possibly how it developed with the invention and legalization of the forward pass, maybe a look into the history of quarterback as a "white" position and the struggle for Black men to break into the role.

I won't say I was disappointed, per se, because Wickersham (an ex-quarterback himself) obviously showed a lot of passion and care in his research for this book and it was full to the brim with details and stories and quotes from interviews. We got stories tying in everyone from Y.A. Tittle to Patrick Mahomes. However, this book unfortunately read to me like draft notes waiting to be organized into a more cohesive manner.

Since I received this file as an ARC, I'm not sure if the formatting will be different in the final copy, but the chapter organization was pretty minimal. We were constantly hopping between quarterbacks and their stories with no real conclusion leaving the reader disoriented for a majority of the read. It was difficult, at least for me, to discern any central thesis tied to each story or chapter, though the overall thesis appeared to be "being a quarterback takes a lot of passion and dedication, and is the toll worth it?"

Overall, I don't not recommend this book, especially if you're interested in a more human look at the mythic quarterbacks of your youth, but don't go into it the way I did expecting a more analytical historical analysis of the position overall.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[John Galluzzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a advance copy of this book thanks to NetGalley.

I can think of dozens of quarterbacks who could have been mentioned in this book.

But that's the point. I can think of dozens of quarterbacks beyond the dozens of quarterbacks that are already profiled or otherwise mentioned or referred to in this book. It's the ultimate focal point in American sports. We scrutinize the starter, sometimes unfairly prop up the back-up and keep tabs on the third and fourth stringers just in case we need them to come in. We know them all.

Wickersham, a self-professed failed quarterback (he might not have used "failed"; perhaps, "as-yet-undiscovered?") brings us back to the start of the quarterback revolution, sharing stories of Bob Waterfield, Y.A. Tittle and others, then carries us forward all the way to today's prospects, Arch Manning, Colin Hurley and more. Nobody is missed, from Marino to Montana to Brady. His narrative, an exercise in Kurt Vonnegut's "unstuck in time" Slaughterhouse Five story jumping, shows us the parallels in the lives of quarterbacks through time. The same pressures, the same microscopes have been on them since the first true star arrived. Some have pushed the envelope - Joe Namath predicting Super Bowl victory for instance - and brought the position to new heights, but the expectation of greatness has always been there, on every team, in every city, every year.

Quarterback development has become an industry. Wickersham walks us through the days and mental stresses of today's young "can't miss" quarterbacks. He examines race through the story of Warren Moon, bucking the system, through John Elway and Eli Manning, and ends with a somewhat sad chapter on the inevitable end for all quarterbacks, when the cheers are gone, and the last memorabilia is sold at auction posthumously.

It turns out quarterbacks are human after all.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Quarterback is something that has always fascinated me. To use Quarterback terminology, Wickersham is able to use ideas and words I have thought about while watching QBs and create concepts to clearly explain why the position is so unique and alluring.

My favorite part was the interview with Steve Young when Seth references that some QBs innately just have "it," and Young responds with a bashful remark about development and what not. To me, this served as confirmation that after the years Seth spent covering the league and collecting info for this book, he believes 2 things:
1) The margin between good and great is so thin.
2) Greatness at the position is both given and learned.

The contrasts stories of Waterfield, Tittle, Elway, and Young show there truly is no 1 roadmap to reach the mountain top.

The Kirk Cousins piece. I can't explain why, but as an NFL fan without a team, I grew to become a Kirk Cousins fan. Beyond his goofy, "ah shucks" nature, it was something about the fact he was unremarkable in stature, talent, and processing. He is the unofficial Mendoza line of the Quarterback. Even prior to the Netflix show Quarterback, I just could tell Kirk had to work harder than almost all QBs because of his lack of innate gifts. I both could not believe and thought it was perfect Wickersham gave a nod to the average nature of Kirk Cousins in this book with a few pages towards the end of a chapter. Another confirmation for myself I can trust my own eyes and thoughts on evaluation of the Kirk situation.

This earned a 4/5 for me as I thoroughly enjoyed all the Caleb and Arch info nuggets (particularly Al Golden pushing kids on the swings at recess at Newman), but I felt as if a more detailed example from the Brady/Peyton/Rodgers/Rivers/Roethlisberger era and the Mahomes/Allen/Lamar era could have provided a full picture of the Quarterback from the beginning to today with Williams/Arch/Hurley.

Also, did Seth make me like Carl Williams?

[Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, okay, okay. I forgot how much I love a good sports bio. And while this took me way longer to read than it should have (thanks, school), I truly enjoyed it and the peeks behind the curtain into a rarefied world that even Hollywood celebrities can’t fully fathom. Wickersham’s writing is superb – he has investment in the story himself as a failed high school quarterback and for me, that provided a lot of good context and relatability. ‘That might have been me’ you think he’s thinking some of the time. His writing this is a way of coming to grips with the fact that it’s a job only 32 men get a year and there is absolutely no guarantee of who is going to make it and who is not. I liked that there is a little bit about the current crop of QBs coming into their own, especially this year – Drake Maye, Bo Nix, Caleb Williams – and the decisions that were made by the teams and coaches to draft those specific players.

One thing that disappointed me is while there’s obvious focus on the “football dads,” (and let’s be real, they are the ones trying to live through their kid) hardly any moms make the cut except for maybe Warren Moon’s. Also, it was so depressing to read the way parents and coaches talk about women, how if you are a quarterback, they are just going to line up for you. Maybe that’s true (certainly seemed true based on Colin Hurley’s DMs), but could we try and change the conversation? Don’t set that up as an expectation, or act like all women want is to be with a famous guy (i.e. QB). Feel like the modeling of father figures *cough, cough* needs some work. Great book – read it if you love football and want to understand America’s fascination with the game and its stars.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Having read “It’s Better to Be Feared”, I was really looking forward to “American Kings”. In the end, it was fine. As a cultural history of the QB position, it was a nice little encapsulation of what has changed over the years, and I enjoyed reading about Bob Waterfield and his stature as the first superstar QB.

Wickersham’s approach was to look at QBs culturally, rather than dive too deep on their skill development and the ways that offense has evolved to focus on them, and while I understand that thought, I think the book could have really benefited from a little more talk on strategy and why we see QBs ringing up numbers on the ground and air that were unthinkable 20 years ago. QBs were already the star, and now they’ve turned into the entire offense- why and what does that mean for a team?

The idea to trace a through line from Waterfield to Mahomes and an up-and-coming QB moving on to LSU is a great idea, but the focus on the main QBs robbed the book of some of the power it could have when looking at other QBs that changed the game and the perception. The book was good, but it could have been great. Having Warren Moon get some laurels and attention was welcome, but he was emblematic of the issues the book had- there was depth, but not a lot beyond diving into a biography of him. It felt like there was something left out, and the glancing time spent on his late career renaissance kept the book from the impact it could have had.

I’d still recommend it for any football fan, it just felt like it could have had more, especially after how good Wickersham’s previous book was.

[markpills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Succinct history of the central position on the football “gridiron,” by the excellent sports expert, Seth Wickersham of ESPN. Author interviews dozens of QB examples, and gets deep into the psyche of the most important player in the history of the sport: Quarterback.

What was a brutal, industrialized game, was made into art by the throwing of the “spiral” by the quarterback in the 1920’s but it required the shape of the football to slim down from its “rugby” sized to something the boyz could hold specifically to their motion. The ideal QB could grip and sling the ball far down-field – the forward pass is still changing football. “Anyone can throw a football, only a quarterback could make people cheer;” and the strange non-spheroid, oblong, “pigskin” wobbling or spinning through the sky, started a sports revolution.

You'll find psychological truths about leadership, unlock offensive strategy from behind the line of scrimmage, uncover dark truths about (nasty, tragic, normal) bad behavior off the field, re-live some great games in past glory, explore the racism of the CFL/NFL, meet some future stars like Arch Manning, and hear the voices of football history derived from over a hundred personal interviews by the author.

In five parts, any football aficionado will find something fascinating to enjoy, and probably have the opportunity to read about their favorite player, in this meticulously researched instant-classic; published in Sept. 2025 by Hyperion Avenue in NYC. I checked the new book out at the local public library, and would highly recommend.

[Bargain Sleuth Book Reviews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I live in an NFL city, so I have more than a passing interest in pro football. American Kings explores the focus of the sport: quarterbacks. If you’re looking for a linear, chronological look at QBs through the years, this isn’t the book for you. This is more of a cultural history of the quarterback’s mythos.

Because of that, I had a hard time getting through the book. The author goes back and forth through time, extending so many threads that I was losing track of who he was talking about. I knew about most of the quarterbacks he mentioned (and he REALLY seems to have a thing for John Elway), except for the newcomers.

I will say that I am glad there wasn’t a lot of play-by-play, which usually makes my eyes glaze over. What makes all pro football QBs succeed, in the author’s eyes, is obsession and the need to control. While great for on-field play, it often means a very bumpy life after leaving the game. There are some quarterbacks who don’t fit that mold, though, like Joe Montana and Steve Young.

For Green Bay Packers fans, there’s a brief mention of Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, but they were not part of the overall narrative.

[Lea Columbus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to thank Net Galley for the opportunity to read this as an ARC. I have followed football for most of my life. I grew up in Pittsburgh , PA and was luck y enough to be there for the days of Chuck Knoll, Terry Bradshaw and the Steel Curtain. I have stayed a fan , both of the Steelers and of football for my 71 years. I was very excited to get this book, as it seemed like a fascinating topic- the Quarterback. There is a lot of information in this book. The author talks about players even before my time ( Y A Tittle, Bob Waterfield), people I remember well, Warren Moon, John Elway, and men who I may well be hearing more about, Caleb Williams, Arch Manning and Colin Hurley. As I said, a lot of information, and I feel completely overwhelmed by the structure, or more to the point, lack of same. Stories are started, not ended, and then picked up again with no rhyme or reason. The writing is good, the information extensive, but for me the lack of completeness in any one section was a major drawback. I kept having to go back and check where one story ended , when it picked up again.I see that I am in the minority here, but the lack of cohesiveness made it a difficult read.

[OneKumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Big fan of Wickersham as a storyteller but American Kings is a step back from his previous work. The scattershot timelines don’t work well in an audiobook and the stories quickly lose all cohesiveness. The final chapter was so jumbled that I had to rewind it multiple times to figure out which character the narrative had jumped to. Even more confoundingly, Wickersham decided to narrate the novel himself instead of hiring a professional voice actor. Seth shines when talking from his perspective but absolutely falls flat when speaking for almost every interviewed quarterback. The Namath and Young sections needed to ooze charisma and they just felt lifeless in comparison.

While most of my complaints are with the audiobook version, I don’t think Wickersham nails his central thesis of the quarterback being revered as cultural icons. Only one of his half dozen or so examples actually feels like a titular story about an American king and that took place over 60 years ago. It’s abundantly clear that Seth idolizes quarterbacks but doesn’t convince us of why we should. Fascinating concept and brilliantly researched but unable to tie it all together.