Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports
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Overview
“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 Roberto Clemente,” and “Beisbol: How the Major Leagues Eat Their Young.”
Zirin’s commentary is always insightful, never predictable.
Dave Zirin is the author of the widely acclaimed book What’s My Name, Fool? (Haymarket Books) and writes the weekly column “Edge of Sports” (edgeofsports.com). He writes a regular column for The Nation and Slam magazine and has appeared as a sports commentator on ESPN TV and radio, CBNC, WNBC, Democracy Now!, Air America, Radio Nation, and Pacifica.
Chuck D redefined rap music and hip-hop culture as leader and co-founder of the legendary rap group Public Enemy. Spike Lee calls him “one of the most politically and socially conscious artists of any generation.” He co-hosts a weekly radio show on Air America.
Synopsis
The nation's sharpest sportswriter explores the contested politics of sports and profiles athletes making change.
Kirkus Reviews
From sportswriter Zirin (What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the U.S., 2005), an analysis of how the worlds of sports and politics collide. Zirin's title, referencing a Public Enemy song (Chuck D wrote the book's foreword), is used to describe how the Superdome was transformed from sporting arena to a deplorable refugee shelter during Hurricane Katrina, and in a larger sense to describe the often-negative political and cultural consequences of sports. The Superdome is a somewhat awkward metaphor, since it was selected as a shelter more for its identity as a large building than as a sports icon, but it's also quite appropriate, since Zirin often attempts to fuse sports and politics, even if the two don't necessarily coincide. For example, he castigates Lance Armstrong for enjoying a bike ride with President Bush and refusing to admit the two ever discussed the Iraq war, despite Armstrong having made a comment a year before in Paris about how he thought that funds for the war might be better spent on cancer research. The criticism is a bit of a reach, and it detract from Zirin's more valid points, about corporate interests versus hip-hop culture in the NBA, the baseball factories in the Dominican Republic, the influence of race on the perception of Barry Bonds and the steroids controversy in baseball. But for each of Zirin's compelling arguments, he often follows it with something ill-conceived, such as exploring the issue of racism in soccer and then speculating that the famous head-butt delivered by France's Zinedine Zidane against Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup must have been a reprisal for a racial taunt, despite the fact that neither Zidane nor Materazzi said whatinspired the attack. Zirin displays a witty writing style, but the book lacks focus and too often presents conclusions that, while provocative, aren't supported by sufficient evidence.