Amazon.com
From basketball's origins in Canada to modern China--with stops in Iowa, Italy, Arizona, and Angola--
Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure ably tracks the international growth and popularity of basketball. Alexander Wolff simply (and convincingly) explores basketball's reach as a driving force and saving grace.
Some countries mimic the NBA to the last detail, while the game provides a symbol of freedom and opportunity in more restrictive countries. Interviews with players, coaches, and local legends provide insight into how the sport has evolved, and what it means, in their respective countries. Perhaps most importantly, we see that, like soccer, basketball is a part of the social fabric, played everywhere by children, sometimes with little more than the rocks Dr. James Naismith had. Although Wolff covers much ground, he covers it quickly; details beyond the game are relatively sparse, as though he had a tight schedule. Still, the book is thoughtfully prepared, the interviews engaging, and Wolff a sure-handed writer.
So why the drive in small countries to play basketball? As a Lithuanian noted: "In Lithuania today, if you have money, you have no reputation, because your money is black [market] money. If you have reputation, you are teacher, scientist, artist--but you have no money. Only basketball player has money and reputation." True, this observation applies to many sports worldwide, but Big Game, Small World stands as part of the proof. --Michael Ferch
From Publishers Weekly
In his newest, Wolff (coauthor of Raw Recruits) sets off on his international tour of "the country of basketball" 16 different nations and eight states with his thesis: "Basketball is quick-cutting, digital, and perfectly adapted to... manifestations of American cultural power." And fortunately for fans, he's also a stylish reporter (for Sports Illustrated). Basketball is now stepping on the heels of soccer as the world's game (Wolff claims that 71% of middle-class teenagers worldwide play or watch, including "two of every three girls on the planet." In the middle of a 1998 Princeton game, Wolff had an epiphany: he would become a roundball anthropologist. His first expedition was to explore professional basketball culture in Europe and to record indigenous versions in Japan, the Philippines, Bhutan and Brazil. He proves that the game's essence transcends national boundaries, and he turns up dozens of dedicated, delightful even tragic basketball stories and characters in what will seem unlikely places to an average Kansas State fan, for instance. He doesn't neglect U.S. homegrown teams, however, and includes familiar interviews in Chapel Hill, Kansas and Texas but it is the new comparative basketball culture that excites his best writing.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
