The new book, “Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness” from Celadon Books, is the most comprehensive work written about Tom Brady. Author Lars Anderson, a former Sports Illustrated scribe, goes to exhaustive lengths to chronicle Brady’s life from an awkward kid from “317 Portola Drive” to superstar athlete and international icon.
The book, released Tuesday, is 432 pages and contains more than 350 original interviews. Anderson’s research was indefatigable, seemingly speaking with every neighbor, classmate, teammate, and coach who came into Brady’s orbit.
Yet reading it was a chore.
Perhaps I’m too immersed in Brady lore because of my job, but Brady’s story — an overlooked sixth-round pick who got his big chance and ran with it — has been told ad nauseum. After 25 years, most Patriots fans know it by heart.
Brady also has been easy to find the last 10 years, with his podcasts, multiple docuseries, Pizza Hut commercials, TB12 books, weekly Fox NFL gig, and much more.
If there is any mystery left in Brady’s story, it unfortunately is not found in this book.
The book does fill in some gaps and presents a richer tableau with anecdotes and insight from dozens of people on the periphery of Brady’s life. But avid Brady fans hoping to discover a deeper side of him, or his perspective on some of the biggest events of his career, will be disappointed. Negative events are mentioned but rarely explored in depth.
The book only has the tiniest mention of Spygate, precious little on the Super Bowl loss to the Giants in 2008, and presents a decidedly pro-Brady version of Deflategate. We still don’t learn why Malcolm Butler was benched in that Super Bowl against the Eagles, or what Brady knew or thought about it. The chapters on his departure from New England don’t mention that he was in contact with Dolphins minority owner Bruce Beal during the 2019 season, leading to tampering penalties. Or his failed plans to join forces with Sean Payton in Miami in 2022 that fell apart because of Brian Flores’s lawsuit.
Where the book provides the best insight is into his off-field relationships — first with actress Bridget Moynihan, the mother of his first child, then with his ex-wife, Gisele Bundchen, and their battles over the longevity of his career. These are the excerpts that have caught the attention of Page Six and the tabloids.
Bundchen’s frustration was understandable. On their first date in 2006, Brady told her that his plan was to play 10 more years through 2016, then retire at age 39, a timeline that suited her well. In February 2017, celebrating on the field after the Super Bowl, Brady’s 28-3 comeback masterpiece for his fifth Super Bowl title, some of the first words out of Bundchen’s mouth were asking if Brady would now retire. Brady pretended he didn’t hear the question, so she asked him two more times that night, including at the after-party.
“Too bad babe, I’m having too much fun,” Brady told her.
Brady balked once he reached 40, buoyed by his obsessive desire to defy the aging process, and fear of what comes after football. Brady also was affected by the 2020 death of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant.
The rest, we mostly know — Bundchen didn’t particularly like living in Boston, putting her life plans on hold, or having an absentee husband who obsessed over football but wasn’t emotionally or physically present for his family.
Seemingly every year, Bundchen asked Brady if it would be his last. Bundchen wanted to travel the world. Brady wanted to start training for the next season at 6 a.m. the day after the Super Bowl.
Their worlds were just too different, and she finally had enough in 2022, filing for divorce.
“Gisele is not really into sports. She’s like a kite flying in the sky, and I’m kind of tethering her,” Brady acknowledged to friends.
The book does provide detail on the fallout with Bill Belichick, and how Brady was closer to leaving the Patriots in 2018 than perhaps many fans may realize. Robert Kraft leaned heavily on Brady to honor his contract, and Brady sucked it up for two more years. The book doesn’t mention that Brady started flirting with the Dolphins in 2019, eventually leading to the tampering charges against Beal.
Brady eventually landed with the Buccaneers in 2020 and won his seventh Super Bowl. But he later came to regret playing a third and final season with the Buccaneers in 2022, which cost him his marriage and was a disaster at 8-9 and quick playoff exit.
The book also delivers a few anecdotes that perhaps have been told before but were new to me — how Brady and Peyton Manning first attended a Bill Walsh football camp together when they were teenagers; how young Brady got picked on by neighborhood kids and got stuffed in a locker in middle school; how Brady got locked inside Notre Dame Stadium before his first college start; how Brady regretted doing the Netflix roast in 2024 and didn’t attend the after-party.
The book is chock full of meticulous details. But the general outline of Brady’s story has been told over and over, much of it by Brady himself. A book that sets out to answer the question, “Who, really, is Tom Brady?” reveals that maybe there isn’t much more to know.
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com.