Battle's End: A Seminole Football Team Revisited

by Caroline Alexander

9 photographs in text.

Genres: Sports

220 pages, Hardcover

First published November 21, 1995

About the author

Caroline Alexander has written for The New Yorker, Granta, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Outside, and National Geographic. She is the curator of "Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Expedition," an exhibition that opened at the American Museum of Natural History in March 1999. She lives on a farm in New Hampshire.

Reviews

[Steven]

Although fully converted during my actual years in undergrad at UF, I grew up an unabashed and dedicated Florida State fan. And of course, the heroes you ave at age 7 tend to stick with you forever. At age 7, two of my biggest heroes were Greg Allen and Jessie "the Jet" Hester, among a host of others. This book, written by a former academic advisor to the University, chronicles the involvement of these players and many others in Florida State University's academic support system and where these players ended up after about 10 years. Some players, like Hester, were very successful and parlayed their football success into success in the NFL. Others were not so fortunate and their dreams of football success ended too soon. This book though was about the path that lead these men to Florida State University and whether that path also included a college degree. Pretty interesting subject told about a group of players well before the recent troubles surrounding FSU's academic support system for its athletic program.

[Shoshana Stubin]

This was of primary interest to me because I was a student at Florida State while the subjects of this book were the superstars on the gridiron. The book was fairly interesting, but way too wordy. I did enjoy seeing the trajectory of each player's life after his short time as a college football player. Sadly, most of the fellows lacked the prerequisite education necessary for success in college and regretted that they weren't able to take advantage of the opportunity for a college education.

[Robert Vandiver]

Just OK--a sort of sameness to the stories, I did enjoy finding out what happened to some of the kids.

[Dee]

great book. i like the way Caroline Alexander told the story.