International Education

Baseball Beyond Our Borders celebrates the globalization of the game while highlighting the different histories and cultures of the nations in which the sport is played. This collection of essays tells the story of America's national pastime as it has spread across the world and undergone instructive, entertaining, and sometimes quirky changes in the process. Covering nineteen countries and a U.S. territory, the contributors show how each country imported baseball, how baseball took hold and developed, how it is organized, played, and followed, and what local and regional traits tell us about the sport's place in each culture.  But what lies in store as baseball's passport fills up with far-flung stamps? Will the international migration of players homogenize baseball? What role will the World Baseball Classic play? These are just a few of the questions the authors pose.

Hockey and multiculturalism are often noted as defining features of Canadian culture; yet, rarely are we forced to question the relationship and tensions between these two social constructs. This book examines the growing significance of hockey in Canada's South Asian communities. The Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi broadcast serves as an entry point for a broader consideration of South Asian experiences in hockey culture based on field work and interviews conducted with hockey players, parents, and coaches in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. This book seeks to inject more "color" into hockey's historically white dominated narratives and representations by returning hockey culture to its multicultural roots. It encourages alternative and multiple narratives about hockey and cultural citizenship by asking which citizens are able to contribute to the webs of meaning that form the nation's cultural fabric.

In this cross-cutting cultural history, Gregg Bocketti traces the origins of football in Brazil from its elitist, Eurocentric identity as "foot-ball" at the end of the nineteenth century to its subsequent mythologization as the specifically Brazilian "futebol," o jogo bonito (the beautiful game). Bocketti examines the popular depictions of the sport as having evolved from a white elite pastime to an integral part of Brazil's national identity known for its passion and creativity, and concludes that these mythologized narratives have obscured many of the complexities and the continuities of the history of football and of Brazil. Mining a rich trove of sources, including contemporary sports journalism, archives of Brazilian soccer clubs, and British ministry records, and looking in detail at soccer's effect on all parts of Brazilian society, Bocketti shows how important the sport is to an understanding of Brazilian nationalism and nation building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Olympic Sports Economy incorporates exclusive case studies and reports from sports management conferences to illustrate the most important business practices and trends of the Olympics today. Every two years, the Olympics wins world attention with contests and celebrations. The success story of the world's most watched event, best recognized symbols, and most enduring brand has many valuable lessons for the business world. An entire constellation of talent and teams works behind the scenes to strengthen the Olympics and keep it relevant in a changing world. Veteran sports business journalist and MBA Max Donner gives readers a useful guide to the key success factors that make the Olympics an exceptional institution. The Olympic Sports Economy incorporates exclusive case studies and reports from sports management conferences to illustrate the most important business practices and trends of the Olympics today. The text also reports objectively about recent controversies and challenges, as well as ways that readers can explore constructive solutions. The Olympic Sports Economy highlights the role the Olympics has played as a model for over six-hundred other international multi-sport competitions and introduces ideas from important trends in Olympic sports that can also benefit other organizations.

In a fresh and original account, Lloyd Freeburn challenges the conventional conception of contracts as the consent-based legal foundation of international sports law. The prevailing legal orthodoxy is shown to be untenable, failing to explain or justify international sports governing bodies' regulatory power or their control over the livelihoods and liberty of participants in sport. The non-consensual jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration for Sport is similarly tainted. But this significant challenge is not made simply to undermine international sport's regulatory regime. A sound legal foundation for regulatory authority in sport is both desirable and necessary. Consequently, effective reform is urgently required to support the regime's legality and to give it legitimacy by resolving the regime's democratic deficit.

Martin Parnell's third book highlighting the power of sport to change lives takes the reader on an inspirational journey into Afghanistan, a country known for political chaos and female oppression. "The children were stoning us, the people said bad words like 'prostitutes, why don't you stay at home? You are destroying Islam.'" --Zainab, Afghanistan's first female marathon runner In 2016, Martin Parnell went on a journey that many believed was madness: running a marathon in Afghanistan in a quest to fight for women's rights and gender equality. Of course, this was not the first time he had been called crazy. In 2010 he had run 250 marathons in one year and in 2013 he had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 21 hours. These two endeavours were part of his "Quest for Kids" initiative, which raised $1.3-million for the humanitarian organization Right To Play and had given the gift of hope to over 27,000 children around the world. It was while recovering from a life-threatening and rare blood clot on his brain that Martin had read about Zainab, the first woman to run a marathon in Afghanistan. He was so inspired by her story that he decided that if he was able to recover from his illness he would run with her at the next "Marathon of Afghanistan" in support of rights for girls and women. In The Secret Marathon, readers will be transported to a country of beauty, hardship and complexity, sharing in the despair, resilience and friendliness of the Afghan people as they strive for freedom and equality for themselves and their fellow citizens.

Three-time Ironman finisher Amy Snyder takes the wraps off the best kept secret in the sports world, the Race Across America (RAAM), a bicycle race like no other. Unlike its famous cousin the Tour de France, RAAM is much crazier, more gothic, and even savage: once the gun goes off the clock doesn't stop, and the first rider to complete the prescribed 3,000-mile route is the victor. In Hell on Two Wheels , Snyder follows a group of athletes before, during, and after the 2009 RAAM, the closest and most controversial race in the event's 30-year history. This work offers a thrilling and remarkably detailed account of the competitors' triumphs and tragedies as they test themselves, each other, and the limits of human endurance. As RAAM exacts its vicious toll, Snyder shows how the racers discover their essential humanity and experience profound joy and completeness, demonstrating how such a grueling effort can also be cleansing and self-revelatory.

Tony Robinson-Smith, his wife Nadya, and ten Bhutanese college students set out to run 578 kilometres (360 miles) across the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas. Joined by a stray dog, they slogged over five mountain passes, bathed in ice-clogged streams, ate over log fires, and stopped at every store, restaurant, guesthouse, and dzong to raise money for the Tarayana Foundation. The "Tara-thon" was the first endeavour of its kind and gave 350 village children the chance to go to school. En route, the Long Distance Dozen met a Buddhist lama, a royal prince, a Tibetan renegade, and a matriarch who told them the secret to long life. On arrival in Thimphu, they were decorated by Her Majesty the Queen. In this contemplative memoir, Tony describes Bhutan in rich detail at a transformative period in its history and reflects on tradition, belief, modernization, and happiness.See the book trailer at: https://www.youtube.com/watch'v=g-VsWAbTHAQ