I just finished "How Soccer Explains..." and read it rather quickly. Of course, I surprise myself sometimes when someone takes away my FIFA gamecube games... While I am unfamiliar with Kuper's book, I highly recommend anyone with a slight interest in world politics and soccer take a glance at this book. It feels mildly basic at times, but i still think there are many good things to glean from it's research. What an interesting line of travel Foer has had in the composing of this book, and the chapter about FC Barcelona should make everyone want to go to Europe and see the beautiful game...
I liked this book, and read it fast. But it should have been called "Soccer Stories for Americans". Most of the chapters were great reads but I don't know why a subject like the "Sentimental Hooligan" should be involved in a discussion about globalization. The Barca and Celtic/Rangers stuff was excellent. The book also gave some good insight on soccer and corruption. To me though it didn't really deal with globalization.
I figured out that it's a good way to introduce soccer to my friends, especially the ones that have obsessions with politics (Brazil was a big hit). It helps boil things down to basic levels and the stuff on hooliganism helps, too.
I'm a little late to the thread and a slightly off-topic as well, so double apologies. However, this thread made me think of a fantastic book I recently read about cricket in the colonial Trinidad. (I'm sure some of the literary minds on the boards will already be aware of it!). It's called Beyond a Bondary, by C.L.R. James, first published in 1963. If I had to reduce it to one grossly over-simplificating sentence, I'd say that it's about the ways in which the institutionalized sport of cricket reflect(s)/(ed) colonial structures in the West Indies and in England. (maybe?) Anyway, it might be of interest to those thinking about sports more generally, and not only soccer, as institutions with real political significance and influence.
That's an accurate reading. I would only add that James talks about how the colonized, rather than passively absorb those colonial structures, use sport to resist and (maybe) even to transcend them. The sport was still Cricket when the West Indians got into it, but the West Indian identity expressed itself in the sport in ways the colonizers could neither predict nor control. Great book for the inquiring sports fan, even if he or she doesn't know a thing about cricket.