The Game of Our Lives

Oct 21, 2024 12:46 AM

Author:David Goldblatt

WINNER of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2015

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 now calamitous bust. A must-read for the thinking football fan, The Game of Our Lives will appeal to readers of Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby and Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson. It will also be relished by readers of British social history such as Austerity Britain by David Kynaston.

'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' Sunday Times

Reviews

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

The deserving winner of this year's William Hill Sports Book of the Year award

—— Chris Maume , Independent

This is a breakthrough book by one of the leading young lights of Australian writing

—— Cath Turner , Nudge

Despite it being an almost impossible subject to write about, Krien has produced a brilliant, disarming, thought-provoking book

—— Malachy Clerkin , Irish Times

A thought-provoking book that every aspiring male footballer should be made to read…as part of their apprenticeship

—— Susan Egelstaff , Herald

A worthy, if unexpected, winner

—— Simon Redfern , Independent On Sunday

A depressing but essential read

—— Sharon Wheeler , Times Higher Education

an intelligent and unsettling exploration of how sport’s macho culture and exclusion of women enable abuse

—— David Evans, Four Stars , Independent on Sunday

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