Books
Long Bomb
Reviews
A lively writer, Forrest does a stellar job of capturing the bizarre goings-on of the blustery league….Long Bomb is more than a football book….It’s a book about a pop culture phenomenon, one bigger than Refrigerator Perry and more fleeting than the Macarena.
–Publishers Weekly
A marvelous canter across one of media-land’s most misbegotten enterprises. One now only awaits the NBC movie of the week.
–Christopher Byron, bestselling author of Martha Inc. and The Fanciest Dive
Parts of Long Bomb seemed reminiscent of the prose of Hunter S. Thompson…. Long Bomb is a tale of loud and empty promises and the failure of style to become apparent, let alone triumph over substance.
–Bill Littlefield, host of “Only A Game,” National Public Radio
When historians look back on the “anything’s possible” hubris of American culture at the turn of the millennium, one hard-to-miss boondoggle will be the “extreme” football league that promised to take professional football to new levels of “reality” and gore…. Forrest writes snappily and brings some memorable XFL characters to the page….Well-told tale of ego and excess run amok in big-time sports.
–Kirkus Reviews
Last season’s most egregious stinker came courtesy of NBC and Vince McMahon, who attempted to parlay the low-brow “attractions” of wrestling with all-access football. The result was one of the worst failures in television history and is recounted in hilarious detail. No one comes out unscathed—whether it’s bumbling players, sleazy cheerleaders, lunkhead broadcasting execs or embarrassed celebrity announcers.
–USA Today
Ooops! For so many, this sums up the one season experiment of the XFL. High hopes to He Hate Me—how did it happen? Long Bomb is an intriguing tale that reaches far beyond the football and the bombast.
–Chris Berman, ESPN
Football is the madman’s search for his soul. Brett Forrest brilliantly shows us the connection between the network suits and the battered bodies cranked through the meat grinder. They share a testosterone-fueled dream of exceeding themselves through football.
–Peter Gent, bestselling author of North Dallas Forty and The Franchise
Brett Forrest has authored Long Bomb, a great read on the late, unlamented XFL. Working from the fringes of “He Hate Me’s” Las Vegas Outlaws, Forrest provides a perversely hilarious, time-lined put-down of those most deserving to have engendered sports and TV’s all-time fiasco.
–New York Post
Long Bomb compellingly recounts the hubris, egos, and clashes behind one of the biggest television disasters of all time.
–The Onion
Forrest’s sentences crackle with pop, energy, and dazzling metaphor. And even though we already know how this tale of overweening greed and arrogance turns out, we keep turning the pages compulsively, like rubberneckers passing a car wreck, so we can see up close the bloodied egos and smashed ambitions of chutzpah-heavy hucksters and hustlers like Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura, and Dick Ebersol. Long Bomb is the bomb.
–Peter Alson, author of One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey “The Kid” Ungar, The World’s Greatest Poker Player and Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie
Considering that nobody cared much about the XFL, Vince McMahon’s one-season pro football fiasco, why should anyone want to read about it? Well, for one thing, Forrest’s book is very funny. And for another, it provides a definitive look at the greed and hypocrisy of many people involved in pro sports…. R.I.P., XFL.
–Washington Times
With Long Bomb, Brett Forrest brutally telestrates the leering and grandly miscalculated fin de siecle spectacle that was the XFL. Forrest’s unsparing autopsy of a book should be required reading for anyone who knows that pro sports is more than just a game.
–Elwood Reid, author of If I Don’t Six, Midnight Sun, and D.B.
Forrest is a big talent, and this book is filled with enough insights and wicked one-liners to expose the way sports really gets packaged for TV.
–Shaun Assael, bestselling author of Sex, Lies, and Headlocks
The XFL, a loose-cannon combo between football and the WWF, was supposed to revolutionize TV sports. Instead, it stumbled and died in its first season. Read the inside story in Long Bomb.
–New York Daily News
Long Bomb proves the venture headed by wrasslin’ honcho Vince McMahon was never really on the brink of anything but pretty certain failure.
–E!
Destined to be recalled as the New Coke of the new millennium, the XFL makes a fascinating case study in corporate hubris.
–Variety
Journalist Forrest recreates the short but provocative run of the XFL….This fascinating pop culture tale is recommended for all libraries.
–Library Journal
