Two-time winner Donald McRae's A MAN'S WORLD is in the running for the 2015 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, along with investigations of the bidding for the 2022 World Cup and of the Oscar Pistorius case.
The Award longlist, announced yesterday, is:
THE UGLY GAME: THE QATARI PLOT TO BUY THE WORLD CUP, Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert (Simon & Schuster)
SPEED KINGS, Andy Bull (Bantam Press)
LIVING ON THE VOLCANO: THE SECRETS OF SURVIVING AS A FOOTBALL MANAGER, Michael Calvin (Century)
THE TRIALS OF OSCAR PISTORIUS: CHASE YOUR SHADOW, John Carlin (Atlantic Books)
KINGS OF THE ROAD: A JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF BRITISH CYCLING, Robert Dineen (Aurum)
A KING IN HIDING: HOW A CHILD REFUGEE BECAME A WORLD CHESS CHAMPION, Fahim, Sophie Le Callennec, Xavier Parmentier and Barbara Mellor (translator) (Icon)
FIFTY-SIX: THE STORY OF THE BRADFORD FIRE, Martin Fletcher (Bloomsbury)
THE GAME OF OUR LIVES: THE MEANING AND MAKING OF ENGLISH FOOTBALL, David Goldblatt (Viking)
RUNNER: A SHORT STORY ABOUT A LONG RUN, Lizzy Hawker (Aurum)
FIRE IN BABYLON, Simon Lister (Yellow Jersey)
A MAN'S WORLD: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF EMILE GRIFFITH, Donald McRae (Simon & Schuster)
THE BOLT SUPREMACY, Richard Moore (Yellow Jersey)
MY FIGHT/YOUR FIGHT: THE OFFICIAL RONDA ROUSEY AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Ronda Rousey and Maria Burns Ortiz (Century)
JOURNEYMEN: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BOXING BUSINESS, Mark Turley (Pitch)
The judges are Clarke Carlisle, John Inverdale, Danny Kelly, Hugh McIlvanney, Alyson Rudd, and John Gaustad (Chair). Their shortlist will be announced on 27 October, and the winner will be announced at an afternoon reception at BAFTA in London on Thursday 26 November.
The winner receives a cheque for £27,000, a free £2,500 William Hill bet, a leather-bound copy of his or her book, and a day at the races. Shortlisted authors get £3,000 each, £1,000 free bets, and leather-bound copies.
THE GAME OF OUR LIVES
The Meaning and Making of English Football
David Goldblatt
(Viking UK/Nation Books US/400pp)
‘Goldblatt is not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possible the best there has ever been’ Sunday Times
In the last two decades football in Britain has made the transition from a peripheral dying sport to the very centre of our popular culture, from an economic basket-case to a booming entertainment industry. What does it mean when football becomes so central to our private and political lives? Has it enriched us or impoverished us?
In this sparkling book David Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon tracks the momentous economic, social and political changes of the post-Thatcherite era in a more illuminating manner than football, and no cultural practice sheds more light on the aspirations and attitudes of our long boom and now calamitous bust. A must-read for the thinking football fan, The Game of Our Lives will appeal to readers of Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby and Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson. It will also be relished by readers of British social history such as Austerity Britain by David Kynaston.
About the Author
David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Football (Penguin, 2007), the definitive historical account of the world's game, and of Futebol Nation (Penguin, 2014), a highly acclaimed footballing history of Brazil. For a number of years he wrote a sports column in Prospect magazine and has made a number of documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and for the World Service, including ones on football in Jerusalem and the politics of the game in Kenya. He has also taught the sociology of sport at the University of Bristol, at De Montfort University, Leicester, and at Pitzer College, Los Angeles. He lives in Bristol.