An enticing title that I've noticed for a while but passed over as my interest in soccer really extends no further than the field itself. Despite my love for playing the game, I've never been a big 'fan' as it is, well, difficult to care when you live in a place that broadcasts probably a dozen games a year. . . and that's if there are World Cup qualifiers on!

Despite my lack of knowledge about the sport on a world stage, I greatly enjoyed Foer's account of futbol as a means for explaining a variety of globalization phenomenon. Through a heap of soccer based travel, Foer develops an admittedly 'unlikely' theory of globalization that tackles topics as broad as Africans in Eastern Europe to the infection of American hip-hop culture throughout the world, and even the future of Islamic states.

Written by an American for an American audience, this book is a great introduction to the sport on a world stage. Kind of like World Soccer: 101. From it's pages, anyone with the slightest interest in the sport can pick up a heap of valuable knowledge, especially when trying to find one's 'favorite' team to root for. Whoulda thunk that so many teams have fascist and racist underpinnings while others are almost all but owned by the State!?

An enjoyable read that is broken down into 10 coherent sections, each tackling their own unique topic through the lens of soccer as the ultimate, well, everything!