About this item
Essential reading for soccer fans as the 2022 World Cup approaches, this lively and lyrical book is "an ideal guide to the worlds most popular sport" (Simon Kuper, coauthor of Soccernomics) .. Soccer is not only the worlds most popular game; its also one of the most widely shared forms of global culture. The Language of the Game is a passionate and engaging introduction to soccers history, tactics, and human drama. Profiling soccers full cast of characters - goalies and position players, referees and managers, commentators and fans - historian and soccer scholar Laurent Dubois describes how the games low scores, relentless motion, and spectacular individual performances combine to turn each match into a unique and unpredictable story. He also shows how soccers global reach makes it an unparalleled theater for nationalism, international conflict, and human interconnectedness, with close attention to both mens and womens soccer.. Filled with perceptive insights and stories both legendary and little known, The Language of the Game is a rewarding read for anyone seeking to understand soccer better - newcomers and passionate followers alike.
About the Author
Laurent Dubois is Professor of Romance Studies and History and Faculty Director of the Forum for Scholars & Publics at Duke University. His works on the Caribbean in the Age of Revolution include the author of Avengers of the New World (Harvard University Press, 2004) and A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) , which won four book prizes, including the Frederick Douglass Prize. He has also published two collections: Origins of the Black Atlantic, edited with Julius Scott (Routledge Press, 2009) and Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A History in Documents, edited with John Garrigus (Bedford Press, 2006) . In 2012 he published Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (Metropolitan Books) , which was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review as well as in the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe, and the New Yorker. He recently published The Banjo: America's African Instrument (Harvard University Press 2016) , for which he received a National Humanities Center Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He also was the recipient of a Mellon New Directions Fellowship to study Ethnomusicology. He has also written about sport in Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France (University of California Press, 2010) , as well as for The New Republic and Sports Illustrated and at his Soccer Politics Blog. His book The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer (Basic Books) , will be published in March 2018. For more information visit http://duboisl2.wordpress.com/.
