Tuesday, July 06, 2010

What is Andrei Markovits reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Andrei S. Markovits, author (with Lars Rensmann) of the recently released Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture.

One book from his entry:
Michael Boloker, The Gym Rat (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse, 2002)

Boloker details graphically the story of Guy Golden, Division I college basketball coach, who is forced to deal with the aura of the NCAA tournament, "March Madness," while his star player is accused of raping a coed. The novel concerns the conflict between his love for the game and the pressure to win at any cost....[read on]
Andrei S. Markovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. His books include Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America and Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism.

Among the early praise for Gaming the World:
"I am thrilled to have read this book because it discusses what I am most passionate about: sports and how their very existence, with soccer as a major contributor, have helped shape history on a global scale. As a player, fan, and ambassador of soccer, I am beyond pleased that the authors give my sport its due. Every soccer person, sports fan, and scholar of sports must read this book."
--Brandi Chastain, Olympic gold and silver medalist, Women's World Cup champion

"For those of us turning to the sports page of our daily paper first, here is the book we have been waiting for. Gaming the World offers an up-to-date analysis of the capitalist dreamscape of an important leisure industry. Transformed by globalization, exposed to local and national backlash, marked by American and European exceptionalisms, and rife with symbolic politics, Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann argue, we are what we play--contaminated cosmopolitans in a global civilization still tethered to our local and national roots. What fun!"
--Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University
Read more about Gaming the World, and visit Andrei S. Markovits' website.

Writers Read: Andrei S. Markovits.

--Marshal Zeringue