The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football

Description

The story of our national obsession - from Maggie to Mourinho In the last two decades football in Britain has made the transition from a peripheral dying sport to the very centre of our popular culture, from an economic basket-case to a booming entertainment industry. What does it mean when football becomes so central to our private and political lives? Has it enriched us or impoverished us? In this sparkling book David Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon tracks the momentous economic, social and political changes of the post-Thatcherite era in a more illuminating manner than football, and no cultural practice sheds more light on the aspirations and attitudes of our long boom and subsequent bust.

David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball Is Round- A Global History of Football (Penguin, 2007), the definitive historical account of the world's game, and of Futebol Nation (Penguin, 2014), a highly acclaimed footballing history of Brazil. For a number of years he wrote a sports column in Prospect magazine and has made a number of documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and for the World Service, including ones on football in Jerusalem and the politics of the game in Kenya. He has also taught the sociology of sport at the University of Bristol, at De Montfort University, Leicester, and at Pitzer College, Los Angeles. He lives in Bristol.

Brilliantly incisive. Goldblatt is not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possibly the best there has ever been. Goldblatt's book could hardly be more impressive -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times * Offers an enlightening, enriching experience. It is based on a formidable range of sources, personal observation and a pleasingly sardonic turn of phrase. Not all football writers know their stuff, let alone the socio-economic context, but Goldblatt does. Altogether this is an exceptional book -- David Kynaston * Guardian * Not just the best soccer book in many years but an exemplary account of the changing character of British society in the post-Thatcher era -- David Runciman * Wall Street Journal * David Goldblatt examines [English football] peerlessly ... A superb history of a sport and of a nation * Evening Standard * Goldblatt is a trusted guide ... Rich with statistics, this is an admirably balanced account of the beautiful game * Daily Mail * Prodigious research and a fluent writing style ... this is a fine book which should have an appeal much beyond the game -- Mihir Bose * Independent * An encyclopaedic portrait of English football stripped of all the non-stop hype. The beautiful game is, after all, a dirty business * Financial Times (Life & Arts) * An intensely readable socioeconomic study of English football in the age of globalisation * New Statesman * A book that informs and inspires, a truly great piece of writing * Philosophy Football * The best pub talker of a book for years * Sunday Sport * Goldblatt has a gift for exploring the way the game holds a mirror up to our lives ... His deconstruction of the modern game could hardly be bettered * Observer * [A] bold analysis of Britain's economic and social change refracted through football * The Times * A salient overview of the past quarter-century * Times Literary Supplement *