The Game
18 December 2026
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
Description
For 40 years, Peter King’s unmatched access, curiosity, and passion have made him synonymous with the National Football League. He broke countless stories, giving us the human side of the sport and influencing countless reporters. Players trusted him; coaches and owners revealed information to him. He gathered it all into notebooks and columns that kept fans riveted.
Now, in The Game, King has brought all his knowledge and insight together in one place to tell the story of the modern NFL as no one else could. Moving from the mid-1980s, when the league went head-to-head with baseball in popularity, to the present, when it dominates every other entertainment in America, King narrates the NFL’s explosive rise from the inside. He puts us in the room with Pete Rozelle, toward the end of the legendary commissioner’s career and life. He takes us on the Madden Cruiser, on a cross-country journey with John Madden. He goes behind the scenes in the Reggie White free-agency saga, when the small-town Green Bay Packers made the canniest offer you’ll ever hear. He gives us Deion Sanders’s philosophy on how to be great on the field and how to work the system off it. He shows us Steve Young, lying in a bed with IVs in each arm after the greatest game of his life on the biggest stage. He shares the bizarre story of how a tanning bed and some well-timed push-ups helped catapult Peyton Manning to the top of the 1998 draft. He reveals Nick Foles’s mastery of a moment no one thought he could be equal to. He brings us inside the worlds of referees, of owners, of NFL drafts. Looking at the future, he fires a warning shot about the greed overtaking the game.
Time and again, King was in limousines, on planes, in locker rooms, and on sidelines where players and coaches told him why they did what they did, whom they hated, whom they thought highly of, what they dreamed of achieving. The result is The Game—a portrait of the modern NFL in all its messy glory, from one of the greatest storytellers the sport has ever produced.
Reviews
"[The Game] is an appropriately immersive and original dive across King’s 40 years covering the NFL, something that also explains the evolution of the league…the book is almost like the ultimate edition of MMQB, a fascinating combo of original re-reporting, anecdotes and analysis." — Dan Shanoff, The Athletic
"Sweeping and insightful, this is an essential portrait of America’s game." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A book that’s both sprawling and immersive, bursting at the seams with stories that surprised and delighted this lifelong fan." — Mina Kimes
"The Game is reflective and insightful, reinforcing why Peter King has long been regarded as football’s most trusted journalist." — Dan Patrick
"Peter King’s The Game is The Book. It’s a joyful, insightful, colorful, remarkable look at the modern rise and reign of the NFL through the lens of football’s greatest chronicler and storyteller." — Jeff Pearlman, New York Times best-selling author
"When you read Peter King, you’re getting the real thing." — Richard Sherman
"Peter King turned the soap opera of an NFL season into poetry." — Mike Tirico
"I got mad at Peter for something once. I said to him, ‘The problem with you is that you always think the story is God.' That’s what he thought for the years he covered the NFL. Readers of this book will be glad that’s how he treated the job." — Bill Parcells
"Think the Beatles’ greatest hits but from the preeminent chronicler of the modern NFL." — Mark Leibovich, New York Times best-selling author
"The Game brings the league’s evolution to life through intimate, behind-the-scenes moments—shared with clarity, honesty, and a deep love for the sport." — Troy Aikman
"A masterful book: a history, treatise, reference, travel guide, and memoir, from 40 years of unparalleled access." — Seth Wickersham, New York Times best-selling author
"I come from the same generation as Peter King and there is no chronicler of the NFL better than him in the last 50 years." — Chris “Mad Dog” Russo
"For decades, Peter King was required Monday morning reading for passionate, intelligent football fans who wanted to know what was going on in the league. With The Game, Peter steps back and gives us the long view, showing how the nation’s most popular sport evolved over the past 40 years into an American cultural monolith with global aspirations." — Michael MacCambridge, author of America’s Game