Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete

by Robert W. Wheeler

Born in 1888 in what would soon be Oklahoma Territory, Jim Thorpe was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation. After attending the Sac and Fox agency school and Haskell Indian Junior College in Lawrence, Kansas, he transferred to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. At Carlisle he led the football team to victories over some of the nation’s best college teams—Army, Navy, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska. In 1912 he participated in the Olympic Games in Stockholm, winning both the decathlon and pentathlon. It was then that King Gustav V of Sweden dubbed him “the world’s greatest athlete.”

Between 1913 and 1919, Thorpe played professional baseball for the New York Giants, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Boston Braves. In 1915 he began playing professional football with the Canton (Ohio) Bulldogs. When the top teams were organized into the American Professional Football Association in 1920, Thorpe was named the first president of the organization, renamed the National Football League in 1922. Throughout his career he excelled in every sport he played, earning King Gustav’s accolade many times over.

Genres: Baseball

336 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1981

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very documentary, I may have been expecting a feeling like reading Hillenbrand and didn't get it. But book was informative.

[JK · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good story about one the best athletes ever, but the author relied too much on quotes from newspaper articles. If those had not been in the book, the information provided by actual writing would have been cut by 2/3rds.