Big Game, Small World

Big Game, Small World

A Basketball Adventure

  • Author: Wolff, Alexander
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9781478016151
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781478023456
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2022
  • Month: September
  • Pages: 424
  • Language: English

During the late 1990s, eminent basketball journalist Alexander Wolff traveled the globe to determine how a game invented by a Canadian clergyman became an international phenomenon. Big Game, Small World presents Wolff’s dispatches from sixteen countries spread across five continents and multiple US states. In them, he asks: What can the game tell us about the world? And what can the world tell us about the game? Whether traveling to Bhutan to challenge its king to a pickup game, exploring the women’s game in Brazil, or covering the Afrobasket tournament in Luanda, Angola, during a civil war, Wolff shows how basketball has the power to define an individual, a culture, and even a country.

This updated twentieth anniversary edition features a new preface in which Wolff outlines the contemporary rise of athlete-activists while discussing the increasing dominance within the NBA of marquee international players like Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A loving celebration of basketball, Big Game, Small World is one of the most insightful books ever written about the game.

  • Cover
  • Contents
  • Preface to the Duke Edition
  • Prologue
  • Called for Traveling
  • Fall: Founding Myths, Conflicting Cultures
    • 1. Almonte, Ontario: Duck on a Rock
    • 2. Lithuania: Forest Brothers in Short Pants
    • 3. Poland: The Sultans of Złoty
    • 4. Switzerland: Please Do Not Air Your Dirty Laundry
    • 5. Celebration, Florida: Communities of Three
    • 6. Italy: Strength vs. Virtue
    • 7. Sarajevo Airport: Prisoners of War
    • 8. Bosnia: The Woman Who Sells Men
  • Winter: The American Game and its Far-Flung offspring
    • 9. Peoria, Illinois: Crossover Dreamers
    • 10. Eastern Kansas: Driving Mister John
    • 11. El Paso, Texas: The Bear in Winter
    • 12. Whiteriver, Arizona: Shoots from the Sky
    • 13. Boone, North Carolina: Mayberry Friends
    • 14. Ireland: To Build a Gym
    • 15. Israel: The Long Arm of the Law of Return
    • 16. The Philippines: Madness and Mimicry
    • 17. China: Qiao Dan, Celestial Citizen
  • Spring: The Game Within
    • 18. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Quaker Meetinghouse
    • 19. Brazil: Women of the Laughing Blood
    • 20. Des Moines, Iowa: Unguarded Moments
    • 21. Japan: A Journey of a Thousand Miles, Begun with a Single Shot
    • 22. Bhutan: Gross National Hoopiness
  • Summer: Fast Break to the Future
    • 23. Washington, D.C.: Going to the Next Level
    • 24. France: The “I Love This Game” Theory of Conflict Prevention
    • 25. Angola: Lasme’s Plane Will Be Arriving Shortly
    • 26. Kansas City, Missouri: To Rest, Rather Than to Mischief
    • 27. Princeton, New Jersey: Through the Back Door
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index
    • A
    • B
    • C
    • D
    • E
    • F
    • G
    • H
    • I
    • J
    • K
    • L
    • M
    • N
    • O
    • P
    • Q
    • R
    • S
    • T
    • U
    • V
    • W
    • X
    • Y
    • Z

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