Ebook: Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism

n his latest work, Allen Guttmann explores the ways in which such popular modern sports as soccer, baseball, and basketball have spread from their Western roots to all corners of the globe. He discusses how less powerful peoples go on to adapt these sports into their own regional variants. In addition, Buttmann points out the possibility and reality of resistance to the diffusion of modern Western sports. Games and Empires combines geographical range and historical insight to trace the ways in which key sports have affected cultural development in various countries from the nineteenth century to the present. In the process, Guttmann offers a perspective on the diffusion of sports within various societies, discussing the attempts of women to participate in male-dominated sports and the dissemination of sports from one social class to another. Games and Empires covers the introduction of cricket into societies as diverse as the United States and India; the arrival of soccer football in a number of European, Latin American, and African nations; the export of baseball to Japan and the Caribbean; the spread of basketball to the Far East and Western Europe; the global expansion of the Olympics; and the recent invasion by American sports in areas where British sports have long been dominant.