Talking Irish: The Oral History of Notre Dame Football

No football program in the collegiate ranks comes close to Notre Dame's for the sheer weight of myth that cloaks it. The smartness of Talking Irish is the way myth both speaks for itself and contradicts itself. Irish is, first and foremost, a solid and anecdotally rich history of Notre Dame football from the 1940s to the present, delivered in a series of first-person voices. These voices, looking back, bring the past into the present with immediacy and intimacy. It's a past that isn't quite as pristinely clean as the Irish myth likes to suggest, particularly in the way coaches and players are pressured not just to win, but to win convincingly. Many of the contributors are legendary--Angelo Bertelli, Johnny Lujack, Johnny Lattner, Ralph Guglielmi, Jim Lynch, Tim Brown, Chris Zorich, Terry Brennan, Ara Parseghian, Lou Holt, even the beleaguered Jerry Faust, who comes off especially whiny. This is a smart book that prefers to tackle a sacred cow rather than accept the usual unwavering reverence. --Jeff Silverman