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The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation Sally Jenkins New York: Doubleday, 2007, 352 pages, $24.95 (hardcover)
Sally Jenkins' reconstruction of the Carlisle School for Indians and its successful football teams in the decades before World War I has all the ingredients of a success story. She has brought attention to an understudied institution and episode in American educational history. This timely history addresses significant issues of diversity and opportunity in American society.
Despite this potential the book loses momentum on two counts. First, the legacy of the Carlisle School for Indians is tragic and shameful because it was arrogant and ultimately dysfunctional. second, the magnetism of Jenkins's title is not really sustained in the subsequent saga. By the end of the book her bold claim of "The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation" wilts because the changes were overrated and counterproductive. Although there are fascinating narratives and biographies, the book's "great expectations" conclude with even greater disappointments.
The author's intentions are sound. She places the Carlisle School into the context of political and social history of the Native American tribes and the wars waged by the U.S. Army and later the patronizing and deceptive programs enacted by the U.S. Government through such agencies as the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Most graduate students and faculty will find this prelude familiar and hence belabored. Jenkins devotes great...