From the publisher:
A lifelong soccer player and award-winning author shows us how the sport transcends races, ethnicities, cultures, and experiences and brings us all closer together. Tim Bascom spent half his childhood in Kansas and the other half in East Africa. Living and traveling around the world, the game of soccer proved a constant truth. Through storytelling that effortlessly flows between poignant and funny, sobering and charming, Bascom explores why soccer matters so much in our common, everyday lives, and how this ordinary yet extraordinary game can bring us all a little closer together. His passionate vision for this most global game leads Bascom to describe how soccer brought him sanity in the middle of a brutal revolution in Ethiopia and how bridging divisions of race and culture was key to success for teams he joined in Chicago and Kansas. From watching Arsenal’s energetic rise in the Premier League to the bravery of a besieged Afghanistan Women’s National Team, and from pickup games in the Midwest and the Middle East, Bascom finds universal truths and deeply human meaning in the beautiful game of soccer.
The author:
Tim Bascom, whose newest book (The Boundless Game) is about the international appeal of soccer, is also the author of a novel, a collection of short stories, two collections of essays, and two prize-winning memoirs: Chameleon Days (winner of the Bakeless Prize in Nonfiction) and Running to the Fire (Finalist for IndieFab Memoir of the Year). Bascom, whose growing up years were split between Kansas and Ethiopia, writes often about cross-cultural themes, and he still plays pick-up soccer with a wonderful group of players from nations around the globe. After directing a college creative writing program in Iowa, he returned to Kansas as the Executive Director of the Kansas Book Festival, where his wife was elected as the first woman Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas.
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