Not Just A Game

Timed perfectly for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Chuck Korr and Marvin Close's More Than Just a Game tells the timeless true story of how political prisoners under apartheid found hope and dignity through soccer. In the hell that was Robben Island, inmates united courageously in an act of protest. Beginning in 1964, they requested the right to play soccer during their exercise periods. Denied repeatedly, they risked beatings and food deprivation by repeating their request for three years. Finally granted this right, the prisoners banded together to form a multi-tiered, pro-level league that ran for more than two decades and served as an impassioned symbol of resistance against apartheid. Former Robben Island inmate Nelson Mandela noted in the documentary FIFA: 90 Minutes for Mandela, "Soccer is more than just a game.... The energy, passion, and dedication this game created made us feel alive and triumphant despite the situation we found ourselves in."

A look at how Black players came to shine on the basketball court.

More Than Just a Game tracks the explosion of the sports industry in the United States since 1945 and how it has shaped class, racial, gender, and national identities. By examining both professional and intercollegiate sports such as baseball, football, basketball, golf, tennis, and stock car racing, Kathryn Jay looks at the impact of packaging, salary, hype, corporate sponsorship, drug use, and the presence of women and African American players. Jay also considers the persistent belief that sports encourage good citizenship and morality despite a rise in cheating and violent behavior and an unabashed emphasis on financial gain. More Than Just a Game is a fascinating exploration of a phenomenon that has engaged the American imagination and thrilled fans for decades.

A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.

Sport has always been central to the movements of both the nation-state and the people who resist that nation-state. Think of the Roman Colosseum, Jesse Owens’s four gold-medal victories in the 1936 Nazi Olympics, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s protest at the 1968 Olympics, and the fallout Colin Kaepernick suffered as a result of his recent protest on the sidelines of an NFL game. Sport is a place where the body and the mind are the most dangerous because they are allowed to be unified as one energy. Bodies Built for Game brings together poems, essays, and stories that challenge our traditional ideas of sport and question the power structures that athletics enforce. What is it that drives us to athletics? What is it that makes us break our own bodies or the bodies of others as we root for these unnatural and performed victories? Featuring contributions from a diverse group of writers, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Fatimah Asghar, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Louise Erdrich, Toni Jensen, Ada Limón, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith, and Maya Washington, this book challenges America by questioning its games.

THE GAME IS NOT A GAME IS AN INSIGHTFUL, UNAPOLOGETIC EXPOSÉ OF THE INTERSECTION OF SPORTS, CULTURE, AND POLITICS FROM VETERAN JOURNALIST ROBERT SCOOP JACKSON.

In Whats My Name, Fool? sports writer Dave Zirin shows how sports express the worst - and at times the most creative, exciting, and political - features of our society. Zirins sharp and insightful commentary on the personalities, politics, and history of American sports is unlike any sports writing being done today. Zirin explores how NBA brawls highlight tensions beyond the arena, how the bold stances taken by sports unions can chart a path for the entire labor movement, and the unexplored political stirrings of a new generation of athletes who are no longer content to just ''play one game at a time.'' Whats My Name, Fool? draws on original interviews with former heavyweight champ George Foreman, Olympic athlete John Carlos, NBA player and anti-death penalty activist Etan Thomas, antiwar womens college hoopster Toni Smith, Olympic Project for Human Rights leader Lee Evans and many others. It also unearths a history of athletes ranging from Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali to Billie Jean King, who charted a new course through their athletic ability and their outspoken views.

Allen Iverson transcended race, celebrity, and pop culture and emerged from a troubled past to become one of the most successful and highly compensated athletes in the world. Babb examines what drove his successes and failures, getting behind the familiar, sanitized, and heroic version of Iverson-- the hard-charging, hard-partying athlete who played every game as if it were his last. He brings to life a private, loyal, and often generous Allen Iverson who rarely made the headlines, revealing the back story behind some of Iverson's most memorable moments, and delves deep to discover where Iverson's demons lurked. Over time, Iverson himself came to believe his own hype: that he lived in a world where celebrity is eternal and riches are everlasting.