Madison authors, topics, book events and publishers.

We click on two of the criteria today as Stu welcomes the award-winning journalist Terry Frei, author of Third Down and a War to Go: The All-American 1942 Wisconsin Badgers, from our very good friends at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

The 1942 Wisconsin football team, was coached by one of Knute Rockne’s fabled Four Horsemen, and led by three All-Americans. It went 8-1-1, finishing second in the Big Ten and placing third in the final Associated Press poll. Among the stars were several who would go on to play in the National Football League, including the legendary Elroy Crazy Legs Hirsch. And there were players who would play an important role at the UW for decades to come, like Otto Breitenbach and Bob Rennebohm.

But there were far more who would suit up in far more serious uniforms – the uniforms of a branch of the United States Armed Forces. Their country called them to war, and off they went. They didn’t all see combat, but many did – and several died. Including one of the most respected, even beloved, athletes in Badger history, two-time All-American Dave Schreiner.

Who these young men were, what their 1942 season was like, and what happened to them during and after the war, is the business that occupies Terry Frei in this gripping account of some extraordinary – but altogether typical – young men.

It is a book he is uniquely qualified to write. Not only is he an award-winning journalist – voted by his peers as the best sports journalist in Oregon three times, and four times in Colorado – he is also the son of a member of that 1942 Badger squad, WW2 pilot, and longtime assistant coach for the Denver Broncos, the late Jerry Frei, from Stoughton Wisconsin.

Among Terry Frei’s six other books, Horns, Hogs and Nixon’s Coming – Texas v Arkansas in Dixie’s Last Stand, March 1939: Before the Madness, and the novel Olympic Affair. His website is TerrytFrei.com, that’s FREI, and his twitter handle is @TFrei. He lives in Denver CO.

It’s a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat, Terry Frei.