No family in the history of American sports has ascended to the storybook level of greatness and royal succession quite like the Mannings. Although the façade has occasionally cracked—murmurs of locker-room scandal, flashes of fraternal jealousy—this talented trio of quarterbacks is enshrined in American culture, epitomizing once-proud but dying nostrums of Southern Christian manhood. With remarkable nuance, "outstanding biographer" ( Dallas Morning News ) Mark Ribowsky traces their roots from red-clay Mississippi. From patriarch Archie's heyday at Ole Miss, with its complicated history, to the rise of his Super Bowl champion sons Peyton and Eli, a complex new cultural reality emerges. Drawing on dozens of new interviews, Ribowsky shows that the path to football immortality has not always been smooth, nor completely glorious. The result is a distinctly American saga of a flawed lineage that forever changed the game.