In this series, Pro Football Weekly publisher Hub Arkush talks about his favorite books, and what makes them special to him. Today, he talks about No. 9 on his top-ten books about football list, ‘Instant Replay,’ by Jerry Kramer as told to Dick Schaap.

'Instant Replay' probably doesn’t have the impact today that it had upon its release following the 1967 NFL season. The Green Bay Packers just won their fifth NFL championship in seven seasons — and third straight — but it was truly groundbreaking for its time.

That year was the very beginning of the modern era of pro football after the NFL and old AFL agreed to merge just a year earlier. The game was poised to begin its ascension beyond baseball as America's passion. The Green Bay Packers were the world's most successful sports franchise at the time, and Vince Lombardi dominated every discussion about the greatest coach of all time regardless of the sport. And with all that, no book had ever taken us behind the scenes and into the locker room the way Kramer and Schaap did.

It is also important to note that almost all non-fiction sports works that had come before 'Instant Replay' for the most part read like textbooks. But Schaap was on the cusp of becoming one of our great sports storytellers.

Ironically, Kramer is one of the best NFL Players of all time not yet enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and some believe his visibility from authoring the book may have hurt his chances more than helped them. While Kramer was voted a member of the All Decade (1960's) team by his peers, at between 6-foot-2 and 6-foot-3 and only 245 pounds, he could never play the game today.

The books lasting legacy is its wealth of larger-than-life characters it introduced us to in addition to Lombardi and Kramer: including Starr, McGee, Gregg, Davis, Nitschke, Adderly, Wood and so many more.

To fully understand the dominance and greatness of Lombardi and that Packers team, it is a book that reads as well today as it did 50 years ago and well worth the effort.

Instant Replay

By Jerry Kramer as told to Dick Schaap

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• Hub Arkush is executive editor of Pro Football Weekly. Write to him at harkush@profootballweekly.com.