You play soccer. You watch soccer. You live soccer You breathe soccer. But do you think about soccer? Soccer is the world’s most popular sport, inspiring the absolute devotion of countless fans around the globe. But what is it about soccer that makes it so compelling to watch, discuss, and think about? Is it what it says about class, race, or gender? Is it our national, regional, or tribal identities? Simon Critchley thinks it’s all of these and more. In his new book, he explains what soccer can tell us about each, and how each informs the way we interpret the game, all while building a new system of aesthetics, or even poetics, that we can use to watch the beautiful game. Critchley has made a career out of bringing philosophy to the people through popular subjects, and in What We Think About When We Think About Soccer he uses his considerable philosophical acumen to examine the sport that has captured the hearts and minds of millions.

What do we think about when we think about football? Football is about so many things: memory, history, place, social class, gender (especially masculinity, but increasingly femininity too), family identity, tribal identity, national identity, the nature of groups. It is essentially collaborative, even socialist, yet it exists in a sump of greed, corruption, capitalism and autocracy. Philosopher Simon Critchley attempts to make sense of it all, and to establish a system of aesthetics - even poetics - to show what is beautiful in the beautiful game. He explores, too, how the experience of watching football opens a particular dimension in time; how its magic wards off oblivion; how its dramas play out national identity and non-identity; how we spectators, watching football with tragic pensiveness, participate in the play. And of course, as a football fan, he writes about his heroes and villains: about Zidane and Cruyff, Clough and Revie, Shankly and Klopp.

"American sports agnostics might raise an eyebrow at the idea that soccer represents a staging ground for progressive cultural, social, and political possibility within the United States. It is just another game, after all, in a society where mass-audience spectator sport largely avoids any political stance in other than a generic, corporate-friendly patriotism. But John Sloop picks up on the work of Laurent Dubois and others to see in American soccer-a sport that has achieved immense participation and popularity even as it struggles to establish major league status-a game that permits surprisingly diverse modes of thinking about national identity because of its marginality. As a rhetorician who engages with both critical theory and culture, John Sloop seeks to read soccer as the game intersects with gender, race, sexuality, class, and the logic of neoliberal values. The result of this engagement is a sense of both enormous possibility, and real constraint. If American soccer offers more possibility because of its marginality, looking at how these cultural, social, and political possibilities are closed off or constrained can provide valuable insights into American culture and values. In Soccer's Neoliberal Pitch, Sloop analyzes a host of soccer-adjacent case studies: the equal pay dispute between the US women's national team and the US Soccer Federation, the significance of hooligan literature, the introduction of English soccer to American TV audiences, the strange invisibility of the Mexican soccer league despite its consistent high TV ratings, and the reading of US national teams as "underdogs" despite the nation's quasi-imperial dominance of the Western hemisphere. While there is a growing bookshelf of titles on soccer and a growing number on American soccer, Soccer's Neoliberal Pitch is the first and only book-length analysis of soccer through a rhetorical lens. This book is a model for critical cultural work with sports, with appeal to not only sports studies, but cultural studies, communication, and even gender studies classrooms. It is, independent of its bona fides, an engaging and enjoyable read for the soccer fan and the soccer-curious"--

'Very useful guidance on the practical things you can do to live a fuller and more satisfying life. This book is a treasure-trove. Everyone should read it.' Professor Alan Carr, Head of Department of Psychology, University College Dublin Do you sometimes feel stuck or have the sense that life is passing you by? Would you like to feel happier and more fulfilled but not sure how to get there? In Say Yes to Life, psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Linda Finnegan and well-known broadcaster, author and motivation speaker Christy Kenneally look at ways you can release the power of your own potential to lead a happier and more fulfilling life. In their groundbreaking 'Pathways' system they show you how you can: Overcome obstacles to happiness such as worry, destructive anger, self-doubt and perfectionism Increase your self-esteem by talking back to negative self-talk Change the way you think and react in difficult situations Discover inner strength you never knew you possessed. Find your pathways to happiness. Say Yes to Life - Today. www.discoveringpathways.com

Stories that follow the lives of Jewish characters from the Midwest to the Middle East and beyond: “A profound debut from a writer of great talent.” —Adam Johnson, New York Times–bestselling author of The Orphan Master’s Son The characters of The Worlds We Think We Know are swept up by forces beyond their control: war, adulthood, family—and their own emotions, as powerful as the sandstorm that gusts through these stories. In Ohio, a college student cruelly enlists the help of the boy who loves her to attract the attention of her own crush. In Israel, a young American woman visits an uncommunicative Holocaust survivor and falls in love with a soldier. And from an unnamed Eastern European country, a woman haunts the husband who left her behind for a new life in New York City. The Worlds We Think We Know is a dazzling fiction debut—fiercely funny and entirely original. “Outstanding . . . Set in locales including present-day Jerusalem, the permafrost region of Russia and the streets of Manhattan, Rosenfeld’s best stories focus not only on loss, but on its aftermath: living in the presence of absence.” —Haaretz “Funny and poignant . . . The lush melancholy of this collection is bolstered by the characters’ deep intelligence and wit . . . Jewish history is shredded through with displacement, and many of Rosenfeld’s characters are caught in the position of a having a long cultural history and no sense of home.” —Electric Literature

In each chapter, there is an introduction to a strategy, guidelines for using the strategy in the classroom, and activities to do before, during, or after reading. There is also a complete model lesson that includes a reproducible reading selection, reproducible student page, and follow-up activities. -- P. 5.