American Kings - by Seth Wickersham (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Pull back the curtain on the most powerful position in all of sports: the Quarterback, the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized and worshiped. The New York Times bestselling author of It's Better to be Feared examines football's QB lifecycle: high school, college, the NFL, retirement-and all that comes with it"--

Book Synopsis

"A MUST BUY" -- New York Times / The Athletic

New York Book Festival - General Nonfiction Winner

"An instant classic--not just a great sports book but a great cultural history."
--Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of King: A Life

Pull back the curtain on the most powerful position in all of sports.

The New York Times bestselling author of It's Better to be Feared examines football's QB lifecycle: high school, college, the NFL, retirement--and all that comes with it.

The quarterback: the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized, and worshipped. Still, long before the Super Bowl trophies, massive contracts, brand deals, and millions of social media followers comes the dream. From the backyard to Pop Warner, from high school to college, from the NFL to the Hall of Fame, becoming the country's ultimate idol requires single-minded focus while navigating a maze of bad breaks, insecurities, jealousy, pressure, and fame.

Long known as the outsider's guide into this elite world, Seth Wickersham's fresh reporting goes deep into the quarterback journey, measuring the distance between what the men who have traveled it expected and what they found at the end of the road. Through unprecedented access into the lives of dozens of quarterbacks and generational greats such as Johnny Unitas, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Warren Moon, Steve Young, and others, as well as those figures striving to be remembered, like Caleb Williams and Arch Manning, Wickersham reveals how this one position has become emblematic of success in American life.

As an inside look into a uniquely American job and a uniquely American obsession with football, American Kings is a must-read for sports fans and anyone who wants to understand what the price of ambition tells us about the quest for achievement and status.

Review Quotes

Advance Praise for American Kings

"A must-buy for not only every serious football fan but also every actual quarterback, from high school to the Hall of Fame."
--New York Times / The Athletic

"[The title] sounds grandiose until you realize just how much pressure rides on the shoulders of a quarterback, on and off the field.... To a certain degree, "American Kings" is not so different from any parable about the perils of ambition."
--The New Yorker

"Catnip for sports fans"
--Garden & Gun

"[Wickersham's] ability to scan the field and make smart, crisp connections earns him standing with Plimpton and Halberstam among the finest sports chroniclers."
-- Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize winning author of King: A Life, and Ali: A Life

"Seth Wickersham's new work is subtitled A Biography of the Quarterback, and, yessir, it's not about a single quarterback, it's about all of them. It's about anybody who has ever played, aspired to play, or been obsessed with the quarterback position. [...] read it, folks. I urge you. It's not just about football. It's about a kingdom of its own."
-- Rick Telander, National Sports Media Association Hall of Famer

"A unicorn of a book.... a parable about American ambition, which feels like the exact window we need right now into our national psyche. This will go down as one of the greatest sports books ever, and one of the best books of the year period."
--Wright Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Barn

"No writer has ever gotten the quarterbacks who've become part of of our culture and part of our lives to reveal the nature and cost of their preeminence the way Seth has in the pages of his book... a book written in words that spiral."
-- Tom Junod, two-time National Magazine Award winner and author of In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man

"What elevates American Kings above most books about the QB - and there have been many - is its ambition. Wickersham wants to explain not just how the position works, but why it matters: how it reflects American ideas about leadership, masculinity, power, and self-invention."
-- Pigskin Books

"A must-read for all football fans, but of particular interest to Denver Broncos fans."
-- Broncos Wire / USA Today

"Football fans and pigskin prognosticators both will love this book in a snap."
-- The Miami Times

Praise for Wickersham's It's Better to Be Feared, the National Sports Media Association's Book of the Year

"The definitive document of the Belichick/Brady dynasty."
―Bill Simmons, The Ringer

"On my Mount Rushmore of sports books. The writing is fantastic, the reporting better."
―Peter King, NBC Sports

"[A]n honest, sprawling, meticulously reported, and beautifully written portrayal of perhaps the greatest and probably the most unlikely dynasty in modern professional sports . . . ."
― Chad Finn, Boston Globe

About the Author

Seth Wickersham is a senior writer at ESPN and the New York Times bestselling author of It's Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness. Focusing primarily on longform enterprise and investigative work on the National Football League, Wickersham has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting, and his stories have been anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing, the Best American Sports Writing, and Next Wave: America's New Generation of Great Literary Journalists, among others. Released in 2021, It's Better to Be Feared was named Nonfiction Book of the Year by Sports Illustrated and Best Sports Book by the National Sports Media Association. He lives in Connecticut with his family.