Big Game, Small World
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Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure

Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure


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About the Book

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.

Table of Contents:
Preface to the Duke Edition  xiii Prologue  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

About the Author :
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.

Review :
“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.” - ESPN.com “Wolff’s passion for the game burns feverishly. . . . This is a wonderful book, certainly the best on basketball this season.” (Booklist (starred review)) "[An] excellent book. . . . The Preface for the new edition offers a new context in which to understand and measure the significance of basketball within cultures as varied as that of contemporary Poland, Bosnia, and Bhutan. Wolff analyzes the Netflix production, The Last Dance, and pairs it with the end of American dominance of basketball internationally, as well as the ways in which basketball is understood and played across the world." - Richard Crepeau (New York Journal of Books) “His reporting is terrific. The most entertaining chapters focus on people torn between their love of the game and conflicting, often incongruous forces.” (New York Times Book Review) “Enlightening. . . . Wolff’s knack for finding fascinating people to interview goes far in humanizing basketball in a global context. Highly recommended.” (Library Journal) “May lead the league in ambitiousness of scope . . . most instructive and great fun.” - Bill Littlefield, NPR's (Only a Game) “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.” - Robert Lipsyte (New York Times) “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.” - Daniel Nathan, (International Journal of the History of Sport)


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9781478016151
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Publisher Imprint: Duke University Press
  • Height: 229 mm
  • No of Pages: 277
  • Returnable: Y
  • Weight: 748 gr
  • ISBN-10: 1478016159
  • Publisher Date: 25 Oct 2022
  • Binding: Hardback
  • Language: English
  • No of Pages: 277
  • Sub Title: A Basketball Adventure
  • Width: 152 mm


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