Psst, got an extra $500 you’re not doing anything with?

Last year, photographer Neil Leifer published Ballet in the Dirt: The Golden Age of Baseball (Taschen), a gorgeous limited-edition coffee table book with a list price of $400. Some copies, in fact, went for as much as $700, but a much more democratic, paperback edition was released a few months ago for a more reasonable $49.95.

Well, Leifer is at it again, this time with a collection of his football photos. Only this time, it will cost you at least $500 for Guts and Glory: The Golden Age of American Football, 1958-1978.

From Taschen’s press release:

This collection represents the best of his best, culled from over 10,000 rolls of film on the sport, including hundreds of previously unpublished pictures. It’s impossible to conceive of Peyton Manning hovering over an impromptu wood fire on the sidelines during a blizzard, but Leifer captured Tittle’s Giants doing exactly that during the coldest game in his living memory (the 1962 Championship in New York, a game “far colder than the famous Ice Bowl”). From Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers dynasty to the Miami Dolphins’ perfect season in 1972 to the Minnesota Vikings’ terrifying Front Four — the “Purple People Eaters” — they’re all here.

Following an introduction assembled from the best football columns of the era by famed sports columnist Jim Murray, this collection is divided into four chapters: “On Any Sunday” is Leifer’s homage to the game.”The Legends” includes heroes like Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Namath, Dick Butkus, Frank Gifford, and “Mean” Joe Greene.

“The Bosses” delves into the victories on and off the field of immortal coaches Vince Lombardi, John Madden, Tom Landry, Weeb Ewbank, and others.

Finally,”The Big Game” traces major championship games from 1958 through Super Bowl XII. The in depth captions put the images into their historical context, making the book highly accessible and informative.

The release further states that an even more limited edition OF 200 will be available, “numbered and signed by Neil Leifer and accompanied by one of two chromogenic prints, numbered and signed below the image by the photographer.”

A bargain at $1,350.

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Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2008 New Jersey Jewish News

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