Reviews

Text Box: Reviews

Text Box: Football historian Tom Benjey has written an enjoyable, informative and well-researched book on the history of the Carlisle Indian Football team. Benjey goes into detail about each football season with great enthusiasm. He gives us a snapshot of the men, especially Jim Thorpe, Pete Calac, Joe Guyon and more, while they played for the great Pop Warner. A must-read for all football fans! Chris Willis Head Archivist, NFL Films and author of Walter Lingo, Jim Thorpe, and the Oorang Indians

Text Box: Gridiron Gypsies is a unique early history of a fascinating football team. The informal, entertaining narrative conveys the author’s enthusiasm for his subject.... The season game summaries at the end of each chapter are superb. Also, the photographs and illustrations throughout enhance the narrative for the reader greatly. The old fashion illustration of the football players along with the title and subtitle on the front cover are well placed. The colors on the cover and the quotations are great design elements. Gridiron Gypsies is an outstanding early football history.

Text Box: ...a fascinating, little-known slice of American history with this exhaustive examination of the football team at the Carlisle Indian School, a federally funded Pennsylvania boarding school for Native Americans that opened in 1879…. shocked the nation with its sports teams’ athleticism and competitive spirit. Those qualities are exemplified by the football program’s most famous alumnus, Jim Thorpe, a two-time All-American at Carlisle.

Text Box: The book is truly “ground breaking!” It delves—deeply in most cases—into subjects I’ve never seen/heard before. Great work! The cartoons and pictures, etc. add so much to the book—also many unseen by me before. Jim Campbell author of Hell with the Lid Off: Inside the Fierce Rivalry between the 1970s Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers

Text Box: Fascinating and thought provoking If there was ever a book that should be a mainstay in collections strong in Native American history, culture, and issues, or early civil rights efforts, it should be Gridiron Gypsies. The story is about far more than sports, tackling the subject of integration and Native American rights in an era when most would rather have killed than educate them.

Text Box: When the Carlisle Indian School, a federally-funded Pennsylvania boarding school for Native Americans that opened in 1879, was given permission to play other schools, the small group of students old enough to play against college men traveled miles to play games on the road. They soon became known nationwide as large crowds turned out to watch them play. With the hiring of Pop Warner as their coach, they were a phenomenon. Carlisle players made All-America lists and seven have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame: Jim Thorpe, James Johnson, Gus Welch, Ed Rogers, Al Exendine,