QB: My Life Behind the Spiral by Steve Young

Ah, my beloved 49ers, will it ever be fun to watch you guys play again? How long will this miserable, painful playing go on? The only upside to how you're playing this season is that in my football pool, I've been picking whatever team you're up against and so I've been doing fairly well (ranked #7 out of 25!).

I grew up with the 49ers of the 80s and 90s. So I seriously believed that the 49ers were supposed to be in the Super Bowl almost every year and just the team they played against changed. In my eight-year-old mind, I really didn't understand that not every team makes it to the post-season because the 49ers always made it to the play-offs. And that's just how the world worked, right?

How we've fallen since then! (Although congrats to my favorite player, kicker Phil Dawson on his 400th field goal!)

Okay, onto the book. This is written by Steve Young, one of the 49ers greatest quarterbacks! I heard Steve Young being interviewed on NPR and he sounded like a smart, thoughtful guy. (You can listen to the NPR interview here.) I had no idea that he struggled with intense anxiety during his playing years. I immediately requested his book from the library.

This book was super personal, thoughtful, and candid. He talks about some of his regrets, his struggles, his Mormon faith, and what life is like for him after football. Young was an excellent quarterback, but he is also a man of integrity and he sounds pretty self-aware. I also appreciate that he de-stigmatizes anxiety and discusses various ways that anxiety can be treated and managed.

If you're not really a fan of football, you probably won't like this book because there's a lot of descriptions of the games (explained in very concise ways though) and so a basic understanding of football would be helpful. But if you love football, and even better, if you love the 49ers (as hard as that is right now!), this book might be right up your alley.