One Game at a Time. Why Sports Matter

Sports are serious stuff. Football, basketball, tennis, mixed martial arts, and beyond: these are arenas of immense power, with mass appeal, yet far too many of us have abandoned the sporting world as a legitimate site of contestation and innovation. Why? What do we gain by handing over the power of sports to the world of hyper-consumption, militarism, violence, sexism, and homophobia—the worst elements of our culture? As Matt Hern suggests, not a whole lot. On the basis of his forty-plus years of sports fanaticism, Hern makes an impassioned and entertaining plea for a more active engagement with sports, both physically and intellectually. His eye is critical, and his analysis is sharp, but this book is more than a critique—it’s a celebration of what sports have taught us, and a map of how much more we still have to learn. Matt Hern is a former sportswriter and a radical urbanist whose writing has been published on six continents. Fun, engaging, and fast-paced, One Game at a Time is for anyone willing to get their head into the game