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Title: Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism. by Andrei S. Markovits, Steven L. Hellerman ISBN: 0-691-07447-X Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Entertaining & Accurate
Comment: A great read - and not just for sports fans. Markovits and Hellerman use their topic (the lack of a real soccer culture in the US) to explicate and explore the relationship between America and the rest of the world. For those interested in the development and history of the United State's various sports leagues, OFFSIDE has plenty of accurate facts, references, and resources. For those interested in the more theoretical & sociological aspects of the work, OFFSIDE has a strong and clear outline and plenty of well written, interesting analysis and argument. If you want to understand the social and political role sports play in human culture, OR you want to learn more about American exceptionalism, (and have fun doing it), OR both, read this book!
Rating: 5
Summary: Offside is on target....
Comment: "Offside"'s authors have come up with a book that works both as a work of sports history, and socio-cultural criticism. Markovits and Hellerman paint a clear picture of American social behavior as it relates to the teams we follow, detailing the development of U.S. sports culture, and its expansion into the dominant role it currently holds in society. Clear without being dumb-downed, intellectual without being too "academic" (i.e. wordy, jargony, overly theory-based, etc.), "Offside" is a serious, enveloping work.
The main meat of the book lies in its center section, which goes into a historical account of the birth and development of the "big three & 1/2" sports in America (baseball, football, basketball and hockey). The authors show how each sport had a "window of opportunity" to expand within the backdrop of America's cultural and financial explosion from apx. the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Great Depression. Here, the book exposes something probably unknown today: that soccer had the opportunity to take part in this development in the 1920s, but due to politicing and in-fighting, was not able to keep a single, solid, professional league together, choosing to split instead into smaller, weaker, more insignifcant groups that could not sustain themselves long enough to gain a fan base and a presence in the American sports scene. Meanwhile, the "big sports" ended up a societal "necessity" in the 1930s: spectator-sports and movies boomed, giving people the best bang for their diminished bucks.
The later sections of the book explain how soccer may have been granted a new "window" due to (1) the World Cup in the U.S. in the past decade; (2) the establishment of the MSL, with the most capitol of any American soccer league yet; and (3) the dominance of the U.S. Women's team, thus giving a female form to the historically male world sport-space. There are new challenges a fledgling sports league faces that didn't exist at the beginning of the last century, some more obvious than others--I'll leave it to the authors and their grand piece of work to explain the rest.
Rating: 4
Summary: Brilliantly researched, not sure about premise
Comment: Books on American soccer (and, good grief, there aren't many to choose from, folks) tend to consist of little more than statistical abstracts or how-to-play coaching guides. Narratives tracing the game's development are few and far between, and for that reason alone we should be grateful for this book. The history of the American game is in the hands of too few people, and the story of its development (or the lack of it) is often unfamiliar to even the most devoted fan.
If I understand Markovits's premise correctly, the reason why there is no soccer in America is because it cannot find room in America's crowded three-and-one-half sport "space." This I find hard to accept. Almost certainly, there are many reasons why soccer has never been embraced by America, "sport space" amongst them. Patriotism and xenophobia, ignorance, incompetence and lack of vision, conflicting interests, and just plain bad timing have surely made significant contributions, too. One only has to read much of what Markovits and Hellerman have written to see this.
I really enjoyed reading this book, particularly its attempt to compare the development of soccer with that of America's other major team sports. It may be an academic work, but it's hardly excruciating to read, and its truly international perspective (rare in American sports books) makes it essential reading for anyone curious as to the game's failure to take hold in the U.S. The painstaking research and careful annotation is also worthy of mention and will be useful to future writers.
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Title: Fear and Loathing in World Football by Gary Armstrong , Richard Giulianotti ISBN: 1859734634 Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd Pub. Date: August, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Soccer in Sun and Shadow, New Edition by Eduardo Galeano, Mark Fried, Eduardo H. Galeano ISBN: 1859844235 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Polyarchy: Participation & Opposition by Robert Alan Dahl ISBN: 0300015658 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 1971 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Making Democracy Work by Robert D. Putnam, Robert Leonardi, Raffaella Y. Nanetti ISBN: 0691037388 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 27 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times : The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy by Nancy Bermeo ISBN: 0691089701 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 21 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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