“Dave Zirin is the best young sportswriter in America.”-Robert Lipsyte This much-anticipated sequel to What’s My Name, Fool? by acclaimed commentator Dave Zirin breaks new ground in sports writing, looking at the controversies and trends now shaping sports in the United States-and abroad. Features chapters such as “Barry Bonds is Gonna Git Your Mama: The Last Word on Steroids,” “Pro Basketball and the Two Souls of Hip-Hop,” “An Icon’s Redemption: The Great Rober… More >>
Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports
I enjoyed the book. I am glad to know about the authors website to get his new writing. I thought the book was insightful and great for a fan like me.
Rating: 3 / 5
Finally a book that takes some of our nations favorite pastimes and peoples and humanizes them. Instead of making excuses and putting people in sports aloof, Zirin examines the social and economic ramifications of sport. An honest look at the way our national sports treat their players, and their most important asset, their fans and young admireres. This book will change the way you think about sports and sports heroes for the better.
Dave Zirin’s writings teach us that a ballplayers actions on the field are nothing if he or she can’t stand for something beyond his or her own paycheck.
Rating: 5 / 5
what a tremendous book for anyone interested in sports, humanity, racism and the cracks in the american dream. this book is amazing. zirin doesn’t hold back at all and sinks his teeth down to the bone. highly, highly reccomended.
Rating: 5 / 5
Zirin was an important discovery for me. As a kid, I followed professional baseball and basketball with a very childlike passion. Later I got disgusted with the general state of the corporate franchises and drifted away from any interest in watching sports in any form. After being assigned as a teaching assistant to a course on the history of sports in the modern world, I picked up Zirin’s first book and this one to help me appreciate the political side of professional sports. I’m of the audience Dave Marsh of XM Radio had in mind when he wrote that “the people who need to read Dave Zirin most are people who don’t think sports is important at all. Zirin knows it is and he continually shows how it fits into the rest of our world.”
I believe Zirin also has much to say to those who already understand the importance of sports. The debates over race, class, business, jingoism, steroids, and so on, that rage within the world of sports bear directly or indirectly on just about every area of politics and public life. In all of these essays — which explore the political underbelly of major league baseball, the NBA, the Olympics, soccer, and more — he shows a fine understanding of the precisely these kinds of connections and the ways people with political influence routinely use sports for their own ends.
Zirin has strong opinions, and that in itself is not unique. But he expresses his arguments more cogently and supports them more effectively than any other opinionated sports commentator I’ve ever heard. This is what enables him to engage and challenge the preconceived beliefs of every one of his readers. Furthermore, he’s an outstanding writer. Welcome to the Terrordome frequently had me outraged over a fact or quoted statement and then, sometimes on the same page, I’d be laughing out loud at a particularly funny or audacious turn of phrase. Whether or not we agree with Zirin should not make or break the book’s significance. If we really want to challenge our sometimes ossified views of the world, we’ve got to seek out writers like Zirin, who offer perspectives entirely lacking in the weak analysis, calculated outrage, and narrow political perspective on offer in the overwhelming majority of mainstream political commentary.
My only complaint is that there should have been some endnotes, not just to document the quotes he uses but also to help orient the book in relation to other writings on sports with which Zirin is in dialogue in his essays.
Rating: 5 / 5
In his first book, “What’s My Name Fool,” those who were not already Zirin fanatics from his column, “The Edge of Sports” were introduced to his distinctive voice. In “Fool,” while always paying respect to radical sports writers who came before(such as Lester Rodney), Zirin in many ways opened up a new world of sports writing and social criticism.
No one could have suspected that this sequel would match, and even surpass, his original effort. Uncompromising, stylishly written, and filled by his encyclopedic knowledge of sports and history, “Welcome to the Terrordome” is a work of art, forged from a soulful passion against injustice in the post-katrina world.
Both of Zirin’s books are part of the new wave of smartly written social histories which have come out in the last few years. If you’re a fan, for instance, of Jeff Chang’s excellent “Can’t Stop, Won’s Stop” then this book is for you. Even if you are not a sports fan, you can’t miss this book. Its thoughtful commentary is an essential contribution to understanding the tangled, inspiring, but too often heartbreaking mess that is American popular culture.
Rating: 5 / 5