First and Last Seasons: A Father, a Son, and Sunday Afternoon Football

by Dan McGraw

Book Overview

Reminiscent of Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes and James Dodson's Final Rounds,First and Last Seasonsis not only a courageously confessional memoir but a work of resounding originality-a Rust Belt... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385498330
• ISBN13: 9780385498333
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 298 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

This book struck very close to home - literally. MUST READ!

I didn't think it possible that anyone could really describe what it was like to grow up in the small Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio, and how it feels to return there as an adult. But Dan McGraw has done just that. Cleveland has been referred to as 'the Land of Oz,' and Dan McGraw's book gives the reader a bitter-sweet taste of what it means to be called a `Clevelander.'Although I don't personally know Dan McGraw, I grew up right on the Lake Erie lakefront about a mile from where he and his family lived.His accurate, colorful descriptions of the locations and people in and around the Cleveland area are right on the mark. The book really `tells it like it is' when one is faced with the illness and death of a parent, and one's identity as it relates to their parents and their neighborhood.What is it like going back to your old neighborhood and finding things have changed but yet remain the same? It is an interesting paradox that really comes out in the story, as does Dan McGraw's attitude as he experiences a myriad of mixed emotions toward life and the city he both loved and hated.It is a book certainly everyone can identify with, and forces one to raise questions about their own experiences with family and friends, as well as one's upbringing. The book expresses the feeling held by many Clevelanders that growing up in the city by the lake was depressing yet exhilirating, dull yet exciting, comforting yet agitating.Don't miss this interesting biography of a man who saw through to the inner meaning of what it is to be a son, a father, a caregiver, and a resident of what has got to be the strangest, most unique area in America.

Not Tuesday's With Morrie

I read Albom's Tuesday's With Morrie and felt I had just read a book based on fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant. Be kind to others; stop and smell the roses. This book is much more complex, much more real, and much more enjoyable. When Dan McGraw wries about his father, he does so with a loving eye, but also with the knowledge of the faults his father had. This book is the only book I have read about fathers and sons that is not so sappy as to make you gag. So honest, I felt uncomfortable reading it at time. Kudos to Dan McGraw for doing a book that is so different from the rest of the genre.

Mandatory Reading for any Clevelander

I bought it a week ago, I couldn't put it down and tonight I went to the author's signing at the local mall. If you're from Cleveland and you follow sports, if you're a fan of the grit and character of the Old Browns, if you've ever lost a loved one who had a shared memory of sports with you, this book is a keeper. I was first in line tonight and Dan's face was glowing red as he signed my book: "Thanks for being #1." The book is funny, brutally honest and an east sider's analysis of why things are the way they are in Cleveland. The author is a wild, yarn spinning, beer chugging Irishman who's father smirks right back on death when it smiles on him. I know I'll pick this up again next fall and possibly every fall because it's a piece of history. Dan doesn't paint an optimistic picture of the future of the Browns, but hey, us Clevelander's have embraced losing for decades. We can handle the truth!

A Great Read

First and Last Seasons is an honest and at times brutal look at a writer's life at one of those crossroad moments we all have in our lives. In the summer and fall of 1999 Dan McGraw took a leave of absence from his job as a writer for U.S. News and World Report to go home to Cleveland to help care for his dying dad, and to cover the return of the once proud Browns to Northern Ohio. This isn't a warm and fuzzy book, although there are some very emotional moments. It is a story of a middle age man facing his father's death, and his own checkered life and mortality. McGraw is funny and sad and always honest in looking at himself, and his life long love/hate relationships with his father, their football team, and the city that shaped their lives. A great read.

a great book about a father and a son, and funny too.

This is kind of the anti-Morrie. Nothing against that book, but this is not a warm and fuzzy kind of story. It's very unsentimental, and more effective because of that. IF you're not into honesty, don't read this--it's easily the most honest look at a father-son relationship I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. So many American men and their fathers have a curiously aloof relationship, often based on doing things together instead of talking and sharing feelings . . . and sports is often one of those activities. I think almost every guy in America will identify with Dan McGraw and his memorable and terminally ill dad, who, when his son tells him he's writing a book about the two of them, asks, "When would it be good for me to die? You know, for the book?" The process of McGraw making peace with his father, with the "expansion" Cleveland Browns' season in the background, is by turns awkward, painful, corrosively funny (there's no shortage of drinking and profanity here), and beautiful. The elder McGraw is simply one of the most unforgettable characters I've ever read about. I just can't recommend this book highly.