Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 -

Football provides a unique look at the philosophical underpinnings and complexity of the world's most popular sport. Mumford (Univ. of Durham) addresses five key considerations that impact how people may approach, play, and consume the sport of football (soccer). He begins by unfolding the aesthetics of the "beautiful game" and posing a question: is football an art? Second, Mumford explores the dichotomy of individual brilliance versus collective greatness, as often argued among football fans. He then moves to the philosophical idea of space, explaining how opposing teams control space within the flow of a game and what that space can mean to fans. Mumford also examines the roles of chance, control, and unpredictability in football. The book concludes by presenting the philosophical approach to winning and the potential conflict between victory and aesthetic value. Does it matter how a team wins? Or does it have to win the right way? Mumford provides a scintillating read filled with thought-provoking ideas, drawing examples from past and present times. The author's skill in presenting the philosophical approach in a concise and consumable manner is crucial to making this book accessible.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

The Infield Fly Rule (IFR) has become a shibboleth: knowledge of its content, nuances, and effects separates cognoscenti from dabblers. Reputedly obscure, yet quite easy to state, and only moderately more difficult to put into practice, it is less difficult (or consequential) than rules commonly found in other sports (soccer offsides, anyone?). Deep thinkers about legal, economic, and political theory find IFR provides a framework for discussing cherished concepts; Wasserman (law, Florida International Univ.) tells why. The Infield Fly Rule is a "limiting rule" addressing a situation with four critical characteristics: (1) one party's incentive is to act contrary to ordinary understanding of excellence, thereby (2) receiving extraordinary and inequitable cost-benefit disparity, that (3) the opposition is powerless to counter, producing 4) an overwhelming incentive for (1)'s perverse action every time the situation arises. Without IFR, an IFR situation produces a game event that is ugly, unfair, and (worst of all) boring. This reviewer coached college baseball, and before reading this small treasure wrote down every conceivable argument for and against IFR. All of them and more are addressed here precisely, with wit, style, and evidence. One can ask for no more than that.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Three accomplished anthropologists provide a thorough overview of the anthropological study of sport. They combined their own specialty areas with prior anthropology publications as well as a survey of the literature of sport history, sociology, and philosophy to produce a thematically organized discussion of sport across the millennia and across the world as a whole. Topics include sport through the lens of colonialism and imperialism, health and the environment, cultural performance and mega-events, nationalism, social class, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and sexuality. Each of these topics has been studied by other scholars in a variety of disciplines (which the authors acknowledge with detailed notes), but the strength of this work is both the connection of past scholarship with anthropological theory and the inclusion of a truly international perspective that encompasses the non-Western world. The authors' own fieldwork experiences have included work in China, Brazil, Cuba, Tonga, Fiji, Japan, and Europe, resulting in additional insights. Although the structure necessitates some repetition, this weakness is counterbalanced by the fact that the individual chapters can largely stand alone. This ambitious endeavor is, on the whole, nicely done.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.

This is an important collection of 37 succinct essays on a variety of timely issues from adaptive sports, body image, and bullying to gender identity and inclusion, hazing, and substance abuse. Arthur-Banning (Clemson Univ.) explains how playing sports for fun in neighborhoods has changed over time to become highly organized, competitive, and expensive. Discussion also touches on coaching, from parent volunteers (and the need for parent education) to professional training certification, understanding child and character development, role models, and mentoring. Data is provided to support the extremely limited opportunity for college scholarships and related recruiting practices. Controversies and concerns are also explored about pay-to-play, single-sport specialization, elite travel club teams and emphasis on winning, and concussions and other injuries. A useful appendix includes short overviews, histories, and participation statistics on nineteen popular youth sports; also included are brief resumes of contributors and a short bibliography. Chapter resource lists, including websites, add to the scholarly apparatus. Covering a wide range of topics for a broad audience, this text is an excellent addition to academic and general collections.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.