Aaron Rodgers: Leader of the Pack

While a pretty quick read, Leader of the Pack is a visual feast. It’s the first book on Super Bowl MVP Aaron Rodgers since the Chico native quarterbacked the Green Bay Packers to the NFL championship. At only 186 pages, nearly half of them gorgeous, full-page color photos, this book by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sportswriter Rob Reischel looks and reads like an extended Sports Illustrated article. There are plenty of mentions and photos of Rodgers’ formative years in Chico, starting with his stellar performance as a 170-pound quarterback at Pleasant Valley High and continuing on to his recruitment to Butte College. That, of course, put him on the radar of the University of California, Berkeley, and eventually the NFL. Most of the engaging tale concerns his three years as a starter with the Packers. The excitement builds as Rodgers pushes past expectations and pushes his team further each year, making second-guessers out of colleges that didn’t recruit him out of high school and the 23 teams that passed on him in the NFL draft. After winning the championship, Rodgers gushes, “It’s what I dreamt about as a little kid watching Joe Montana and Steve Young, and we just won the Super Bowl.”