Monsters, Rich Cohen
Monsters, Rich Cohen
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Monsters
The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football

Author: Rich Cohen

Narrator: Tom Taylorson

Unabridged: 10 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/15/2014

Synopsis

The gripping account of a once-in-a-lifetime football team and their lone championship seasonFor Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team: they were the greatest football team ever—a gang of colorful nuts, dancing and pounding their way to victory. They won a Super Bowl and saved a city.It was not just that the Monsters of the Midway won but how they did it. On offense, there was high-stepping running back Walter Payton and Punky QB Jim McMahon, who had a knack for pissing off Coach Mike Ditka as he made his way to the end zone. On defense, there was the 46: a revolutionary, quarterback-concussing scheme cooked up by Buddy Ryan and ruthlessly implemented by Hall of Famers such as Dan "Danimal" Hampton and "Samurai" Mike Singletary. On the sidelines, in the locker rooms, and in bars, there was the never-ending soap opera: the coach and the quarterback bickering on television, Ditka and Ryan nearly coming to blows in the Orange Bowl, the players recording the "Super Bowl Shuffle" video the morning after the season's only loss.Cohen tracked down the coaches and players from this iconic team and asked them everything he has always wanted to know: What's it like to win? What's it like to lose? Do you really hate the guys on the other side? Were you ever scared? What do you think as you lie broken on the field? How do you go on after you have lived your dream but life has not ended?The result is Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, a portrait not merely of a team but of a city and a game: its history, its future, its fallen men, its immortal heroes. But mostly it's about being a fan—about loving too much. This is a book about America at its most nonsensical, delirious, and joyful.

About Rich Cohen

Rich Cohen is the New York Times-bestselling author of Tough Jews, Monsters, Sweet and Low, The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones, The Chicago Cubs, and The Last Pirate of New York, and, with Jerry Weintraub, When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead. He is the cocreator of the HBO series Vinyl, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and a writer at large for Air Mail. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine, among other publications. Cohen has won the Great Lakes Book Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He lives in Connecticut.

About Tom Taylorson

Tom Taylorson earned his bachelor's in theater arts performance and went on to build a reputation as a Chicago-based actor. He has lent his voice to a multitude of television and radio commercials, video games, animation, and audiobooks. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve

I’m tempted to trot out the old cliché when talking about certain better sports books: “…and you don’t have to be a fan to like it.” But then I ask myself if it’s fair for me to say since I am a Bears fan, and of a vintage to remember the Monsters of the Midway in ’85 when they were one of the most......more

Goodreads review by Louis

One of the better books I've read on the NFL, marred only by the writer's need to insert himself into the story a bit too often. This is somewhat understandable; after all, a long-suffering Chicago sports fan has every right to remember the 1985 Bears. This team not only won the Super Bowl but also......more

Goodreads review by Ian

Pretty ordinary. Author has read most of the (many) other books about the Bears, interviewed some of the former players and put together a collection of stories that are mostly well known. He also interviews many of the members of the 1985 team, but it's more of a compilation than a presentation of......more

Goodreads review by Ian

Rich Cohen's Monsters is a book that makes some strange choices in structure and focus, such that its content isn't adequately indicated either by its full title or inside cover blurb. In fact, the narrative doesn't so much flow as teleport erratically. We start with the standard kind of introduction......more

Goodreads review by Shawn

Nearly perfect. I loved this book from beginning to end. The prehistory of the NFL was fascinating, and the snapshots of previous Bear eras leading up to 1985 were evocative. At first I thought it was a strange choice to start with Doug Plank, who had been gone for a couple of years by the Super Bow......more

Quotes

“Every year brings a Super Bowl, World Series, NBA, and Stanley Cup champion. All are duly noted and celebrated. But a memorable few have greater and more lasting resonance, a standing that excellence alone cannot explain. The 1985 Chicago Bears were such a team, a mélange of talents and outsized personalities that captivated and embodied a city. Rich Cohen experienced it as an obsessed seventeen-year-old. Almost three decades on, he remains obsessed—entertainingly and insightfully so, but obsessed nonetheless. His combination of reporting and remembrance is by turns evocative, revealing, quirky, and funny as hell—or at least as funny as Gary Fencik doing the Super Bowl Shuffle.” Bob Costas

“Monsters is a remarkable book, beautifully written, but that’s beside the point. You think you’re going to read a football book but you wind up reading about America, about who we are—you and me—and even why. And Rich Cohen has accomplished this feat through portraits of some of the greatest characters ever to have charged onto a football field and then left it.” Ira Berkow, author and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter

“For anyone from Chicago, or anyone with any sense, the ’85 Bears are the best team there ever was, and Rich Cohen has written the book we’ve always wanted. It’s got all the people you want to hear from: Ditka, McMahon, Singletary, Wilson, Fencik, and, thank God, the incomparable and too-often-forgotten Doug Plank. This book—full of soul and searching and also knock-you-down funny—is not just a great sports book, not just a great Chicago book, but a great book, period.” Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author

“A riveting account of one of football’s most iconic teams, the 1985 Chicago Bears, features frank interviews with the players and coaches.” People

“Rich Cohen’s Monsters is the best book on professional football I know—the best because the most truthful.” Wall Street Journal

“Entire forests have given their lives to the pursuit of the truth about Mongo, the Fridge, Danimal, and other larger-than-life characters on Da Coach’s rambunctious squad. The search ends with Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football…It is Cohen’s skillful compilation and shrewd interpretation of the total package that make the book work. He combines intelligence and insight with a reporter’s eye for detail and a novelist’s writing chops…What Cohen’s book does better than its predecessors is transform its subjects from cartoon characters—think Mongo McMichael’s boozy gentlemen’s club commercials—into real people with talents, flaws, loves, hates, fears, pleasures, anxieties, joys…human beings, just like the rest of us, only bigger, faster, stronger, tougher, braver, etc.” Chicago Sun-Times

“As much as it is about the ’85 Bears, Monsters is an emotional education of football and ‘the Stone Age pleasure of watching large men battle to the point of exhaustion.’ At one point, Cohen attributes Halas for the development of football’s emphasis on the passing game: ‘It was Halas, as much as anyone, who invented the modern NFL offense and lifted the game from the ground into the air.’ You can’t help but think that Cohen’s doing the same thing here for sports narratives.” Grantland

“Cohen, who grew up as a suburban Chicago Bears fan and witnessed firsthand the Bears’ victory when he was seventeen…is especially good at detailing the rivalry between coach Mike Ditka and his defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan…His fan’s perspective added to his excellent reporting and engrossing interviews produce great insights into the team’s colorful stars.” Publishers Weekly

“Taylorson does what good narrators of memoirs and nonfiction must do—convince listeners that he is channeling the author’s voice…And give him credit for singing rather than reading a few bars of ‘Bear Down, Chicago Bears.’ A fun title for football fans, especially those who bleed Chicago Bears orange and blue.” Booklist (audio review)

“The historical context enriches the book, as do Cohen’s explanation of the team’s groundbreaking ‘46’ defense, his lively interviews with principals, and his analyses of what went right with the team, and, in subsequent years, what went wrong…Engaging.” Booklist

Awards

  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
  • Amazon Top 100 Book
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