The Last Cowboy: A Life of Tom Landry

Tom Landry spent 40 years in professional football, most notably 29 years as the original coach of the oft-celebrated Dallas Cowboys. Landry was one of the most innovative and influential coaches in NFL history, essentially inventing his own offensive and defensive systems that spread throughout the league. Beginning as the defensive coach of the Giants in the 1950s, the cool technician from Texas was the polar opposite of that team's volatile offensive coach, Vince Lombardi, who would be his chief rival in the 1960s. Although Ribowsky (Howard Cosell) is gratuitously snarky about Landry's religious and political beliefs at times, he recounts Landry's life honestly, avoiding both distortion and hagiography while portraying a stoic, flawed man of honor. The one failing of the book is that there is little about Landry's family life during the time he was coaching.