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Big Game, Small World
$24.95
| Quantity | Discount |
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| 5 + | $18.71 |
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Description
During the late 1990s, eminent basketball journalist Alexander Wolff traveled the globe to determine how a game invented by a Canadian clergyman became an international phenomenon. Big Game, Small World presents Wolff’s dispatches from sixteen countries spread across five continents and multiple US states. In them, he asks: What can the game tell us about the world? And what can the world tell us about the game? Whether traveling to Bhutan to challenge its king to a pickup game, exploring the women’s game in Brazil, or covering the Afrobasket tournament in Luanda, Angola, during a civil war, Wolff shows how basketball has the power to define an individual, a culture, and even a country.
This updated twentieth anniversary edition features a new preface in which Wolff outlines the contemporary rise of athlete-activists while discussing the increasing dominance within the NBA of marquee international players like Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A loving celebration of basketball, Big Game, Small World is one of the most insightful books ever written about the game. In this revised and expanded twentieth anniversary edition of Big Game, Small World, Alexander Wolff travels the globe in search of what basketball can tell us about the world, and what the world can tell us about the game. Alexander Wolff is a journalist, editor, and author. Formerly a Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated, he is the author and coauthor of several books, including The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama, Raw Recruits (with Armen Keteyian), and Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home. Preface to the Duke Edition xiiiPrologue 1
Called for Traveling 3
Fall: Founding Myths, Conflicting Cultures
1. Almonte, Ontario: Duck on a Rock 13
2. Lithuania: Forest Brothers in Short Pants 26
3. Poland: The Sultans of Złoty 39
4. Switzerland: Please Do Not Air You Dirty Laundry 55
5. Celebration Florida: Communities of Three 66
6. Italy: Strength vs. Virtue 76
7. Sarajevo Airport: Prisoners of War 88
8. Bosnia: The Woman Who Sells Men 103
Winter: The American Game and Its Far-Flung Offspring
9. Peoria, Illinois: Crossover Dreamers 117
10. Eastern Kansas: Driving Mister John 128
11. El Paso, Texas: The Bear in Winter 138
12. Whiteriver, Arizona: Shoots from the Sky 152
13. Boone, North Carolina: Mayberry Friends 161
14. Ireland: To Build a Gym 172
15. Israel: The Long Arm of the Law of Return 184
16. The Philippines: Madness and Mimicry 200
17. China: Qiao Dan, Celestial Citizen 213
Spring: The Game Within
18. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Quaker Meetinghouse 231
19. Brazil: Women of the Laughing Blood 243
20. Des Moines, Iowa: Unguarded Moments 255
21. Japan: A Journey of a Thousand Miles, Begun with a Single Shot 264
22. Bhutan: Gross National Hoopiness 280
Summer: Fast Break to the Future
23. Washington, D.C.: Going to the Next Level 303
24. France: The “I Love This Game” Theory of Conflict Prevention 315
25. Angola: Lasme‘s Plane Will Be Arriving Shortly 323
26. Kansas City, Missouri: To Rest, Rather Than to Mischief 344
27. Princeton, New Jersey: Through the Back Door 352
Acknowledgments 361
Index 369
“Everyone who reads this book—from kids shooting jumpers in their driveways to die-hard fans to NBA superstars—will learn something new and surprising about the game they love.”
“Part travel memoir, part sports narrative, Alexander Wolff’s Big Game, Small World is a beautiful rendering of a love affair with basketball and a magnificent take on why sport matters. Sports fans and writers alike will herald this new edition of a classic book.”
“Every piece could be a book or movie in itself. . . . They're tied together by Wolff's search for the soul of hoops, in himself and in the lives of the people and cultures he meets. . . . This book’s a keeper.”
“His reporting is terrific. The most entertaining chapters focus on people torn between their love of the game and conflicting, often incongruous forces.”
“Alexander Wolff takes us through 16 countries, from Bhutan to Poland, and dozens of states in search of a community of hoops. What he finds may be just too quirky to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but the pieces are prize winners.”
“Wolff has a great feel for basketball and the people who love the game.”
“Wolff’s passion for the game burns feverishly. . . . This is a wonderful book, certainly the best on basketball this season.”
“Enlightening. . . . Wolff’s knack for finding fascinating people to interview goes far in humanizing basketball in a global context. Highly recommended.”
“May lead the league in ambitiousness of scope . . . most instructive and great fun.”
“A lengthy, sprawling, eclectic book, Big Game, Small World is part travelogue, part memoir, a mélange of concise histories, quick-hitting ethnographies and biographical portraits. . . . [It] is a self-consciously meditative narrative, a historically informed, critically alert quest for authenticity and meaning.”
“One of the great sports books of all time, and one of the finest travelogues.”
Additional information
| Weight | 1 oz |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 1 × 6 × 9 in |