The Dallas Cowboys

Review: Dallas Cowboys (Team Spirit) Stewart, Mark. Dallas Cowboys (Team Spirit), Chicago: Norwood House Press. 2006 48p illus $ [...] (list) ISBN 978-1-59953-004-8 I know its hard to go into great detail in just 48 pages about a team with the storied history of the Dallas Cowboys, but it should not be too much to ask that basic facts be checked before going to print. The problems start on the back cover, where one of the "Did you know" "facts" is listed as "The Dallas Cowboys have won more Super Bowls than any other team". As a Cowboy fan, I wish that were true, but I can just see some poor eight-year old making a bet, and losing it, on the basis of the "fact" given on the back cover. Adults, especially those fans who don't exactly care for "America's Team", will recognize the typo immediately -- but most kids (the target audience for this book) believe everything they read in a book is fact. Another problem, albeit much less significant: on page 6, author Stewart says the Minnesota Vikings joined the NFL in 1960, the same year as the Cowboys and the eight teams of the AFL. Of course, the Vikings joined the NFL in 1961. Another more significant error (and ironically was in the news last year): the URL for the Dallas Cowboys is not correct. The team could have had "cowboys.com" but reneged on a winning auction for the domain name when they claimed they thought they were bidding in dollars rather than thousands! The actual URL is [...] Since the author is from New York and grew up as a fan of the Giants and Jets, I can understand him not knowing the history of the Cowboys as well as a Cowboy fan would, but his editors at Norwood House should have been more diligent. And even though HOF staffer Jason Aikens is listed as a content consultant, its clear his forte is football cards, not NFL history. On the plus side, the book does a good job, in very limited space, of covering the high-lights of the team's history in the 60s, 70s and 90s. The 80s get no mention, nor are the two losses to the Packers in the 60s mentioned. The titanic struggles between the Cowboys and 49ers in the 70s, 80s and 90s are overlooked, as was the rivalry with the Redskins, although mention is made of the two losses to the Steelers and subsequent revenge in SB 30. I like the use of classic football cards to identify players (I don't know if this is a feature of each book in the series or just this one). Finally, I notice the book was reissued in 2007 Dallas Cowboys (Team Spirit) (this review covers the library edition released in 2006). I haven't seen the 2007 edition, so I don't know if these errors have been corrected -- but I hope so. Still, this book is a worthy addition to the library of any young Cowboy fan (as long as mom or dad are around to correct the errors).