About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherFarrar, Straus & Giroux

ISBN-100865476942

ISBN-139780865476943

eBay Product ID (ePID)45949200

Product Key Features

Book TitleSoccerhead : an Accidental Journey Into the Heart of the American Game

Number of Pages275 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicSoccer, Coaching / Soccer

Publication Year2006

GenreSports & Recreation

AuthorJim Haner

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1 in

Item Weight14.4 Oz

Item Length8.6 in

Item Width5.8 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2005-006798

Dewey Edition22

Reviews"Jim Haner's book is a delight, not just reported and observed but lived and felt. It shows how soccer has invaded America's soul from the playgrounds up, just as Haner learned everything he needs to know about the game, and sports, from kids." -- Mark Bowden "By turns laugh-out-loud funny, wise and irreverent, SOCCERHEAD hurls the reader into the world of youth soccer, where writer Jim Haner spins a story about a sport into a goldmine of human drama. Issues of parenting, gender and the nature of obsession ricochet through the text. But the real payoff here is Haner, whose intoxicating voice and fierce insights make for a wild ride." --Lauren Cowen This is awesome stuff. Tons of energy and passion. Haner is a vivid, urgent and often hilarious writer, whose use of the language is fresh and refreshingly unhinged. SOCCERHEAD is not only a probing journey into a surging American phenomenon, but also a journey deep into the author's own spastic, colorful and often brilliant mind. Haner is a passionately curious journalist with a bulldog's appetite for the pursuit of truth. He's also a masterful story-teller. From the opening pages, you know you are in for a unique ride. Two hours later, Haner still has you by the lapels, and you can't put SOCCERHEAD down. --Neal Thompson, author of LIGHT THIS CANDLE: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman (Crown, 2004)

Dewey Decimal796.334/07/7

SynopsisA Youth Soccer Coach's Investigation Into The Origins of Soccermainia On July 10, 1999, 100,000 Americans, mostly women, did something they had not done before, at least not in such numbers. They showed up to watch a soccer match. Their attendance at the 1999 Women's World Cup Final took the world by surprise, forcing it to recognize much about itself that it had been in denial of for quite some time. Who were these soccer fans? Where had they come from? Why had no one noticed them before? Award winning journalist Jim Haner asks these questions, and others, as he sets off in search of the origins of the American passion for soccer, uncovering the game's roots in an early industrial Northeast and following them up through the transcontinental suburban present. But Haner is by no means a passive historian of the game; he is the coach of the Hornets, a rag-tag team of ten nine-year-old boys and one determined little girl. Haner provides us with an intimate view of his team's struggles and successes over the course of season, and of his own transformation from reluctant soccer dad to authentic 'soccerhead'. Seamlessly weaving personal and historical narrative threads," Soccerhead" is both an enticing memoir and a cultural inquiry of the first-order--enlightening, entertaining, and informative--shedding new light on a little known chapter of American history., "Before his son enlisted for a season of Youth Soccer at the neighborhood Boys and Girls Club in College Park, Maryland, Jim Haner was just your typical white middle-class suburban father. And as a journalist for The Baltimore Sun, Haner was more likely to write about scoundrels than soccer." "But his son had caught the bug, so Haner reluctantly found himself in a room full of anxious parents, listening to the Youth Soccer Commissioner proudly proclaim that "soccer is the essence of being!" He wondered, What's this all about? and before he knew it, he was giving pep talks to nine-year-olds in shin guards and cleats. As the coach of the Hornets, a ragtag team of ten boys and one determined girl, Haner found himself eating, sleeping, and dreaming soccer: the game became an overwhelming, all-consuming obsession. So he immersed himself in soccer lore, dug deep into the historical record, took road trips to meet the living greats, and funneled his research into an intimate portrait of the soccer craze from the bottom up, and from the past to the present. The coach-turned-soccer apostle describes how "Mob Ball" fever was spread when successive waves of immigrants arrived in the States from England, Europe, South America, and Africa. He traces the rises and falls in the game's popularity in the decades since, up to the current wave of "soccermania." When 100,000 people showed up in Pasadena to see the Americans take the Women's World Cup title in 1999, it was clear that the craze had become unstoppable." "Soccerhead is a timely meditation on the poetry and politics of the game - a memoir, a cultural history, and a reflection on the Zen-ness of the sport, all rolled into one."--BOOK JACKET.

LC Classification NumberGV943.8.H36 2005