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Download The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer ePub

by David Goldblatt

ISBN 1594482969
ISBN13 978-1594482960
Language English
Author David Goldblatt
Publisher Riverhead Books; 1St Edition edition (January 2, 2008)
Pages 992
Formats mbr mobi lit mbr
Category Outdoor Sports
Subcategory Miscellaneous
Size ePub 1119 kb
Size Fb2 1152 kb
Rating: 4.4
Votes: 726

Rare book

Goldblatt: The Ball Is Round was, in retrospect, 20 years in the making. I had wanted to write a world history since I knew that such things existed

Goldblatt: The Ball Is Round was, in retrospect, 20 years in the making. I had wanted to write a world history since I knew that such things existed. In a former life I spent a long time working on globalization and global history and then I made a global atlas of football, so I had plenty of background

David Goldblatt's The Ball Is Round, a detailed history of matches and the world's footballing nations, has John . The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Football.

David Goldblatt's The Ball Is Round, a detailed history of matches and the world's footballing nations, has John Foot's approval. 992pp, Viking, £30. It is half-time in the new film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait and the screen is filled with a series of seemingly random images from across the world. One of these shows the aftermath of a car bomb in Iraq. The scene is a familiar one: burning wreckage, smoke, chaos. One of the bystanders is sporting a football shirt from Real Madrid and has Zidane's name on the back. Since it became a worldwide phenomenon, nobody has attempted to write an overall history of the game.

The Ball is Round book. In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full story of soccer's rise from chaotic folk ritual to the world's most popular sport-now poised to fully establish itself in the USA. The definitive book about soccer . Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern societies, but never loses sight of the beauty, joy, and excitement of the game itself.

Электронная книга "The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer", David Goldblatt. Эту книгу можно прочитать в Google Play Книгах на компьютере, а также на устройствах Android и iOS. Выделяйте текст, добавляйте закладки и делайте заметки,. Выделяйте текст, добавляйте закладки и делайте заметки, скачав книгу "The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer" для чтения в офлайн-режиме.

Goldblatt described this years World Cup as, the most extraordinary, politicised World Cup ever. And whilst a self confessed cynic, he still has romanticism for the competition. This planet of 7 billion people, we don’t do anything in the same numbers simultaneously as we do when it comes to watching the World Cup. Nothing, no funeral, no inauguration, no presidential speech comes close to the World Cup. thebristolcable. Listen: David Goldblatt on Putin, politics and The Bristol Cable.

Goldblatt: The Ball Is Round was, in retrospect, 20 years in the making. In a former life I spent a long time working on globalization and global history and then I made a global atlas of football, so I had plenty of background

The definitive book about soccer.

The definitive book about soccer. There may be no cultural practice more global than soccer. Rites of birth and marriage are infinitely diverse, but the rules of soccer are universal. No world religion can match its geographical scope. The single greatest simultaneous human collective experience is the World Cup final.

Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern . This is the bible of global soccer history as it relates to politics, economics, and society

Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern societies, but never loses sight of the beauty, joy, and excitement of the game itself. This is the bible of global soccer history as it relates to politics, economics, and society. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to know the history of the game and why it has achieved such a world following.

Goldblatt’s project is an ambitious one – to script not only the factors tied to the globalisation of football, but to document the history of the game throughout the cir-cumference of the globe. At one level this task is rel-atively easy, for despite the ‘global’ nature of football, it has real sporting significance on only three of the world’s continents – Europe, South America, and Africa. Despite growth in participation (indeed at a level faster than any other sport) in the United States of America, football is still relatively marginal in a country which hosts many of the world’s largest.

Talk about The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer

Anen

Written with five major sections that examine the game's historic beginnings that date many centuries to Han China with the sport called Cuju "kick ball" in the 3rd. century. Who would have thought that a leather ball filled with feather that was kicked into a net with bamboo canes would change the way games were played and organized? Journalist David Goldblatt takes the enormous feat and examines the game of soccer within over 800 pages.

The Ball is Round, A Global History of Soccer is indeed, a global trek with slopes of where it began and where it has been. As one beginnings their reading of the book, it is suggested that it be read very slowly and carefully. It is interesting to read the early history and brief insight from former FIFA president Sepp Blatter who explains how the game began in Asia and evolves by the 16th to 19th centuries to the west in England and Europe and Latin America and by the 20th century grows in interest and popularity after the Second World War to Africa and regions beyond and back to the east such as in Japan. Within the first 50 pages, Goldblatt writes with the history of the game with fine detail, but as one proceeds to the next 100 pages the chapters in the book display a thematic format despite each marked with a chronological timeline. There is no doubt, the immense detail at times meanders and for amateur readers of the game and its history, may look for additional reference books to understand the events that Goldblatt exerts in each chapter; his writing is parallel to sports commentary and readers looking for stories, which he first displayed in the early chapters may be disappointed. But aside from that, there are interesting aspects of the how the game developed within the global context and how political and social and cultural and economic factors greatly contributed to the game. England helped to mold the structure of what the game is today from the name of the sport as soccer and how it was organized and the number of players on a team. What first began as a game that attracted the intellectual elite in the 19th century English colleges saw its transformation by the turn of the century and during and after the First World War;during the war Goldblatt includes a bit of history from the Christmas Truce of 1914 to how Poet Siegfried Sasoon recalled football news to his troops before another day of strikes on the battlefront, "if you couldn't play, you could talk. If couldn't leave, you could find a memory of normality and home" (174). In addition, the sport became much liberated economically and socially, with leagues of women and overall, a game open to all classes of society, especially the working class.

Goldblatt has by far has written the only book that is a cover to cover global history of the game of soccer. It is a game that he states of pleasure a it is for play without barriers between rich and poor. In essence, it is an international phenomenon that continues to evolve as more young and old continue to play the game.

Wal

I write this review having read roughly half of this book. But that is enough to write a meaningful review of it for the prospective reader.

To begin with, I really anticipated reading this book, as someone who has been a fan of soccer most of my life, albeit in an on and off fashion. I also appreciate long and in depth books, as this one appeared to be. However, I am so far somewhat disappointed in it.

The book is a survey of soccer, from its inception as an organized sport, its working class roots in England, to its evolution in Latin America and modern European leagues. This breadth is also what the book ultimately suffers from. It attempts to weave the different strands of sociology, economics, politics, and culture together in one coherent narrative; but it fails, because the weight collapses on itself.

It's a very difficult task to find a focus in a book of this breadth. It's more challenging still to find a sociological, economic or cultural thesis that could be backed up by solid research and data. Thus, the result is a meandering narrative, without any focus or overarching theory about anything. The author does touch on certain sociological and political issues and aspects, like the working class roots of soccer in England; soccer in Latin America under dictatorships; and tactical differences between countries and continents as a reflection of culture and politics. The disappointment is that there is no in depth treatment of any of these topics, and the result is that the presentation of these issues is nothing more than a set of cobbled, albeit interesting, observations. In sum, this book is ultimately a survey of soccer country by country, continent by continent, era by era.

The prose of the book is readable, but nothing amazing. Often times I found myself re-reading passages due to the lack of clarity; at other times I felt bored and ended up skimming sections because of the dryness of the topics and/or prose.

All in all, this book had a lot of potential and probably would have been better written and more interesting if its breadth was reduced, and its length truncated. However, if you are new to the sport, and looking to learn the basics of the global history of soccer, this book may be for you.

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