The Chicago Bears were once the face of the National Football League. Today they are one of its most popular and most fascinating franchises, selling out game after game in historic Soldier Field and stirring passions in one of America s great football cities. Read Chicago Bears: Yesterday & Today and experience the magnificent history of pro football s charter franchise and the game s most storied team.

Here are some of the fascinating stories included in Chicago Bears: Yesterday & Today:

The pivotal year 1920, when 25-year-old George Halas took a train from Decatur, Illinois where he ran a football team for starch baron A. E. Staley to Canton, Ohio, and formed the American Professional Football Association with other team owners, hammering out an agreement in an auto showroom

Halas nearly five-decade-long tenure atop the franchise, in which he oversaw eight championships, coached six title teams, and became the game s winningest coach

The careers of NFL greats and Chicago icons like mold-breaking quarterback Sid Luckman and back-breaking middle linebackers Dick Butkus, Mike Singletary, and Brian Urlacher

The age of Iron Mike Ditka, the team s most colorful coach, who won the franchise s only Super Bowl and guided colorful characters like defensive tackle William Refrigerator Perry, quarterback Jim McMahon, and defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan

The Bears trouncing of the New England Patriots in the 1985 Super Bowl and their painful performance in the 2007 game, following a dream season

From a foreword by Bears Super Bowl safety Gary Fencik to comments on the arrival of Jay Cutler probably the most talented Bears quarterback ever for the 2009 season, Chicago Bears: Yesterday & Today covers it all.