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 Dončic and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A loving celebration of basketball, Big Game, Small World is one of the most insightful books ever written about the game.
Industry Reviews
"Every piece could be a book or movie in itself. . . . They're tied together by Wolff's search for the soul of hoops, in himself and in the lives of the people and cultures he meets. . . . This book's a keeper." -- ESPN.com
"Wolff's passion for the game burns feverishly. . . . This is a wonderful book, certainly the best on basketball this season." * Booklist (starred review) *
"[An] excellent book. . . . The Preface for the new edition offers a new context in which to understand and measure the significance of basketball within cultures as varied as that of contemporary Poland, Bosnia, and Bhutan. Wolff analyzes the Netflix production, The Last Dance, and pairs it with the end of American dominance of basketball internationally, as well as the ways in which basketball is understood and played across the world." -- Richard Crepeau * New York Journal of Books *
"His reporting is terrific. The most entertaining chapters focus on people torn between their love of the game and conflicting, often incongruous forces." * New York Times Book Review *
"Enlightening. . . . Wolff's knack for finding fascinating people to interview goes far in humanizing basketball in a global context. Highly recommended." * Library Journal *
"May lead the league in ambitiousness of scope . . . most instructive and great fun." -- Bill Littlefield, NPR's * Only a Game *
"Alexander Wolff takes us through 16 countries, from Bhutan to Poland, and dozens of states in search of a community of hoops. What he finds may be just too quirky to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but the pieces are prize winners." -- Robert Lipsyte * New York Times *
"A lengthy, sprawling, eclectic book, Big Game, Small World is part travelogue, part memoir, a melange of concise histories, quick-hitting ethnographies and biographical portraits. . . . [It] is a self-consciously meditative narrative, a historically informed, critically alert quest for authenticity and meaning." -- Daniel Nathan, * International Journal of the History of Sport *
