Pigskin Books is a website devoted to American football books. It is run by Shane Richmond, a writer and editor based in the UK. If you’re a publisher or an author and you’d like to be included, then please get in touch via the form below.
Some years ago, when I was first getting into books about American football, I was looking for ways to find what to read next. I live in London, in the UK, so bookshops here seldom have any books on the sport, let alone a broad selection. My wife is American and her family is in Maryland so I would visit bookshops during our annual visits and stock up. These days, it’s easy to order almost any book online but how do you find books if you don’t know they exist? Occasionally I would find an interesting ‘People who bought x also bought y’ recommendation on Amazon, but that was about it.
Eventually, I found Chris Wesseling’s spreadsheet, which has become revered by fans of football books and is, deservedly, passed around on Twitter like an ancient scroll of wisdom. Chris’s spreadsheet is just a list, though. If you want to know whether you will like a book then you have to look it up and try to find out more. There are a handful of ‘Best football books’ articles that give more detail on some titles but otherwise, you’re stuck with the blurb on Amazon or similar.
The aim of this website is to solve that problem and become a place for football book fans to choose their next read. There’s a reviews archive that is expanding all the time and you can explore it by going back chronologically through the posts, digging into a specific category or using the Author or Team indexes in the top menu.
I’m also adding a few ‘Stubs’, which are basically placeholders for reviews to come. These are books I own, so I know a little about them, but haven’t read yet.
Last – and certainly not least – there will be weekly features throughout the NFL season, including interviews with authors and football experts, features about certain teams or groups of books and ‘Top Five’ guides to help you find books on a theme.
I hope you enjoy it! Please comment and let me know what you think, suggest titles you’d like to see covered or just share your thoughts on a favourite book. And please do spread the word.
If you have a question, want to recommend a book or share anything else at all, then get in touch using the form below.