Books like Futebol — picked by fans

What I love about this book is how it shows that rural schools offer communities more than just a classroom education.

In this case—for better and for worse—it’s sports. And Bissinger wades into it all: tensions between education and sports, the economic unraveling of Texas oil country, the costs of racism, and the pure adrenaline of a Friday night football game.

Not every rural community is as sports-addicted as Odessa, but all have their imperfections and fault lines—so much about this book resonates.

This is a book about cricket, one of the enduring passions of my life.

Specifically it is about West Indian cricket and life in the author’s home of Trinidad. James was a Marxist intellectual, which is unusual for a cricketer. He writes eloquently and insightfully about cricket and some of its leading characters of 80 years ago. He writes about class and colour in both the Caribbean and England, where he played and reported on cricket for newspapers.

My interest has also been in the British Empire and its impact. The overriding impression this book left with me was the “Britishness” of the people of Trinidad; how much the people had imbibed it. So when many immigrated to Britain in the 1950s it felt like they were going ‘home’, only for many to be ostracised.

A maestro. David Goldblatt is the king of football historians. His books are crazy in their scope and brilliant in their execution. The age of football ranges across politics, history, culture in an account that is comprehensive, terrifying, and exhilarating in equal measure. Essential reading to understand the world we live in today. Always within reach on my desk.

A masterful, brave, and melancholic study of a doomed sporting genius. This book is a perfect example of a classic sporting history genre, the biography, which touches on Italian culture, the importance of cycling, the pressure of the media, the conspiracy theories often employed by fans and journalists. A book that was crucial for my study of Italian cycling—and also influenced my book.

I spent many years of my youth flicking through history books on the World Cup and learning about legends like Beckenbauer and Cruyff, Pele, and Maradona, and have always been obsessed with the greatest event in sport. This book tells the definitive story of every event from Uruguay in 1930 up to Russia in 2018. 

Glanville’s style brings out the unique nature of every tournament and the teams, players, and coaches within them, making it much more than a series of brief match reports, which can be a challenge in chronological histories.

A friend recommended this book to me, the beginning of an eight-book series. I enjoyed it immensely. 

I felt as though I was traveling with the main character, Maia, on her journey, full of mystery and romance, to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The historical aspect of the story in 1800s Paris led to my fascination with the creation and building of the famous Christo statue. I have since done additional reading about Christ the Redeemer.

What I loved most about this was the story within the story. A famous author is travelling back from a convention in Brazil when his plane goes down. The only other survivor is a young boy, not quite in his teens. In order to reach safety, they must battle not only Colombian drug runners and other nefarious characters, but the jungle itself.

This is the freshest account I’ve read by a leader of his company’s transformational journey: Ricardo Semler became CEO of his father’s company, SEMCO, at the age of 21, and wrote the book in his early thirties, not to forget the transformative journey he just led.

But even more than the narrative itself, I loved Semler’s philosophical reflections, densely packed throughout the book. Example: “We simply don’t believe our employees have an interest in coming in late and doing as little as possible. After all, the same people raise children and elect mayors and presidents. They are adults. In SEMCO, we treat them as adults.”

Semler, twice chosen as Brazil’s businessperson of the year, proves how a leader, driven by authentic beliefs, can lead a transformation that makes people and—consequently—the company thrive.

This is the go-to history book on capoeira used by scholars, and, by capoeira teachers and students. 

The author is a professor of Latin American history and an expert on slavery in Brazil. He has learnt to play capoeira himself and is friends with many of the famous mestres. Assunçâo’s love of capoeira shows through the book. He had done research in Angola seeking for the origins of capoeira there and made that trip into a prize winning documentary film. 

Because he is fluent in Portuguese he has been able to publish with Brazilian scholars, such as Mestre Luis Renato, whose research is not available in English. The book is a myth buster, and a celebration of the dance-fight-game.

If you love Indiana Jones or tales of King Soloman’s Mines then this is a great book. Very sexy. I will say (because it’s an old book, and yes, I’ve read and re-read it many times. It’s just that good!)

There is major head-hopping, but the story is so compelling that you can actually see past that. As a young girl, the heroine followed in her father’s archeological footsteps. Her father was known as Crackpot Sherman and she is out to prove he was not a crackpot, but things don’t look too promising.

A trek up the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers and a thousand miles through the jungle in a search for the heart of an unknown tribe. Family dynamics, a frustrated, but, definitely, a hero to die for. One of the best stories that will keep you turning the pages, when you are just dying to put it… show more.