Being the General Manger of a National Football League team has to be one of the most fascinating and unique jobs. I suspect if you did a story on all 32 General Managers (some of which are also the head coach, some of which have a different title) you would end up with 32 fairly unique stories with similarity in themes. This particular book focuses on Ernie Accorsi, recently retired GM of the New York Giants.

I love reading about professional football because it is fascinating to me so I did really enjoy this book, for the most part, but frankly the book is somewhat of mess. It seems the author had a lot of material and didn't quite know how to put it together.

This book really is a mini-mini biography of Ernie Accorsi and a recap of the New York Giants 2006 season. The title is very misleading. It is not about "the inside story of a dream job" because it really does not give us a lot of inside stories about being a GM. There is really very little about the real nuts and bolts of being a GM, from player evaluation, hiring and firing head coaches, managing up (the owners) and managing down (coaches and players), trade and personnel strategy, drafting strategy, et cetera. There is, of course, a little bit on these things, but noting in-depth nor particularly enlightening. It's simply a book about Accorsi and the Giants 2006 season.

The book is also somewhat disjointed, jumping around in time or topics without a nice, steady flow. In fact, while the book follows the 2006 Giants season, the drama of it beyond player, coach, and Accorsi comments gets somewhat lost.

The good thing about this book is it is an inside story of the players and coaches and Accorsi but nothing in the book is particularly revealing for surprising. For football fans, however, it's always great to get the story straight from the people involved without the manipulations of the print and electronic media that try to make controversy where none exists.

But, in the end, I would have to rate this book as below average for its misleading title and somewhat disjointed organization.

And a note for the copyeditor - John Hannah is a Hall of Fame guard of the New England Patriots, not a tackle. ( )

As the kind of American Football fan who frequents the footballdiner, the inside story of being a General Manager sounds perfect to me. Unforunately this book does not tell that story. Judging a book by the cover is not always what its cracked up to be. The GM is a biography of Ernie Accorsi, the long-time NFL personnel man and General Manager but it is about him and not the job.

Tom Callahan's writing style is another let-down. He is technically correct in his structure and grammar at all times but his narrative is really weak. There is no underlying theme that holds the book together and it reads as a series of variously interesting anecdotes. Some of the anecdotes are ridiculously underplayed - why does the blockbuster draft deal that took Eli Manning to New York not feature as a major element? All the book reveals is that "Philip Rivers is good, Eli's better."

There are some interesting insights in The GM and I did enjoy the brief interlude with former Cleveland coach Marty Schottenheimer. Still, I wonder why a pick-up game featuring local kids merited a chapter to start the book off.

Callahan and Accorsi both appear to be baseball men. It shows. I have no idea who some of the baseball references are and why should I be expected to? I'm a football fan and I love the game, drop me some football bones. Callahan also writes up in-game drives as if it were baseball and frankly I skipped it quite often. I do read box scores, I seldom read drive charts even when I'm looking up a game. I don't want to read 1-10-C28 Elway Passes Incomplete because it just doesn't tell me anything.

I'm fairly sure that Callahan intended for this book and his account of Accorsi to read as a nostalgic trip through the eyes of a man who has seen it all. Instead, all that is offered up is Accorsi's affection for various quarterbacks through the years. I want to know what the salary cap did to his business, what he thinks of the modern day athlete with their agents and personal advisers, what Accorsi's views are on running a stable and successful franchise. Instead, I get that Tom Coughlin was real strict about people turning up on time.

I have read quite a few books on American Football. This is the most disappointing. Read You're Okay It's Just a Bruise because it is great and then read some other book on the sport because it is bound to be better than this one. ( )