'Hero Of The Underground'

My pal and fellow Brutalist poet Tony O'Neill has
a new co-written book out this week in the US.

Entitled Hero Of The Underground it is a biography
of NFL tooballer-turned-dope fiend Jason Peter.

It has just entered the New York Times best-seller list at #33

Here is some further info.

Hero Of The Underground - Early Press Reviews

"Peter, a star at the University of Nebraska's storied football program in the late 1990s and a first-round NFL draft pick, details his short, frenzied life as a drug user and veteran of the treatment center circuit. It started with painkillers in college, which turned into a full-blown addiction as he battled an array of injuries that ended his career by his late 20s. Avoiding self-help urgings and self-congratulations, Peter (who is now clean) and O'Neill have crafted an unflinching look at the dark side of a life devoted to pleasure. The book's power lies in his honesty in detailing the depths of his despair from seeking the next high.”

- From Publishers Weekly

“Hero of the Underground gives us a portrait of red-blooded jock as monster dope fiend. It’s a savage, unsparing, eye-popping ride through the dark soul of big money, endless drugs, American manhood, and our national past time---self-destruction. We’re lucky he lived to tell the tale. Had Hunter Thompson been a football player instead of a fan, this is the book he’d have written. Flat-out, mash-your-face-in-the-dirt amazing.” –

- Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

"Bruising... more harrowing than usual. Peter’s narrative relentlessly focuses on the brutalizing facts, and it is free from the macho posturing and self-congratulatory navel-gazing common in recovery memoirs. Nightmarishly honest."

- Kirkus Reviews

"Wow, I am not sure how to express how unsettling this wound up being, for me. The book is a sledgehammer. When I think about the book, I feel this sort of hollow whistling in my chest. Jesus."

- Nancy Rommelmann, New York Times bestselling author of The Real Real World