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Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre

Houghton Harcourt. Oct. 2016. 448p. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780544454378. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780544453678. SPORTS
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OrangeReviewStarHere, best-selling author Pearlman (Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton) takes on perhaps the most celebrated football player of the last 25 years: Brett Favre. The record-setting quarterback, who spent the majority of his career with the Green Bay Packers, was tough as nails on the field, but his giant talent was hampered by a tendency to make bad decisions and costly mistakes at key moments. The author, who interviewed more than 500 sources for this biography, demonstrates how Favre regularly undermined himself and his family with problems of addiction and serial infidelity, all of which was kept out of the press until his final years when he was implicated in an embarrassing sexting scandal.
VERDICT Presenting Favre as a congenial, larger-than-life character, a "gunslinger," who was fun to watch on the field and hard to root against, Pearlman proves to be a good match for his subject and creates a compelling work.
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