Spanning seven decades, the notorious loss of Super Bowl III, and an historic undefeated season with the Dolphins, Shula is the definitive biography of a coaching legend.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie, the eldest of six children born during the Depression to Hungarian immigrant parents. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football, but when his parents finally relented, they discovered that their son, though perhaps short on the physical gifts of the truly blessed, had an unmatched mind for the game's strategy and a stomach for its brutality.

With rugged determination, the jut-jawed Shula started as a...