Tuesday, May 11, 2010

New Review of Book from Mark Starr at the Global Post

Read it here.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMay 20, 2010 at 7:53 AM

    What? A Positive review? I can not believe it.
    As I posted on amazon.com this book is not well written at all.
    By Sean McCarthy
    I love soccer and politics and I got a good deal for this book on Amazon.com, but the content did not deliver. The two authors do give a comprehensive breakdown of the 32 tournament participants divided into eight groups. They definitely give some facts and figures on each team and also provide predictions and background information for the tournament as a whole. But the quality of writing is poor and the many factual and spelling errors tell me that the authors did not proofread and fact check their text which, with a published piece of work, must be an embarrassment. In publishing a book or a journal article, etc. it is never recommended, as the authors did more than a few times, to say "According to Wikipedia..." That is never an appropriate source of information for a book, let alone a term paper in college. The spelling and factual errors remind me of the slogan of voting in Chicago in the 1960 election: early and often. For example, did you know that Cameroon won the Confederations Cup in 2002 (Page 234)? No? That's because Cameroon not only has never won a Confederations Cup, no such tournament existed in 2002. Also, apparently according to the authors, Australia lost to Brazil 2-0 in the 2006 World Cup 2nd round (Page 210), except that is not true because Australia lost to Italy on a late penalty. Seriously, I could list at least ten more examples, it's that bad. Additionally, their analysis of the state of soccer in the USA chapter leaves a lot to be desired. One particularly terrible passage was (Page 166) because the US woman's soccer team is so good, soccer has become a "women's game" and thus, according to the authors, "has the unintended effect of making it unacceptable to a large part of middle (and male) America." Really? I guess that little fact of soccer being the most popular youth sport in the United States year after year, with millions of Americans from all backgrounds and states playing year after year, was missed by the two authors. Oops. As for the politics or geopolitics, it's a pretty light and superficial presentation. With the World Cup coming up there are many choices (and resources) to get your information for the big event. So pass on this 370 page volume and go for something that is more professionally put together. For the unsuspecting reader this book might impress, but make no mistake, there are so many errors of semantics, spelling, facts, and analysis that this book should NOT be on anybody's must read list for the upcoming World Cup.

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