Sports Literati

This month on the Sports Literati, we get out of our comfort zone and test our range by reading David Epstein's ideas about the power of diverse groups and why early specialization might not be great for children.

The Sports Literati reconvene to talk about the beautiful game, through the lens of Franklin Foer's classic soccer book How Soccer Explains the World, first published in 2004.

The Sports Literati revisits one of the seminal sports books of the 1990s: The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith. A close examination of the 1990-91 Chicago Bulls, we talk about an up and coming Michael Jordan and how misery just might breed success.

The Sports Literati convene to discuss how the United States 8 man crew rose from the depths of the Great Depression to take down the big, bad Nazis at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The Sports Literati enter the world of mixed martial arts for the first time, as they dissect the memoir of Rickson Gracie, the undefeated legend of Brazilian Jujitsu.

The Sports Literati take a look at Kent Babb's fly-on-the wall account of the 2019 Edna Carr high school football team as it sought a fourth consecutive Louisiana state championship.

The book examines the hopelessness afflicting young, urban, blacks in a city with one of the highest rates of gun violence in America, but only a stone's flow from the affluent tourist neighbourhoods of New Orleans.

Intro and Outro Music: Sergei Rachmanioff Prelude in G-Sharp Minor, Op. 32 performed by Justina Sam.

The Sports Literati convene to discuss John Krakauer's seminal classic about an ascent on Mount Everest that goes horribly wrong. What constitutes a sport? How do intelligent human beings manage to make such a series of bad decisions? Join us as we make an ascent into the world of mountaineering.

This week, the Sports Literati convene to discuss Linsanity, one of Dave's favourite topics (try to guess which Dave!). Matthew Salesses is a Korean American writer who has written, as far as we know, the first literary novel based on Jeremy Lin's epic period of wonder with the New York Knicks in 2012. Join us as we take a look at this novel and discuss the impact of Linsanity on race, literature, and basketball.

The Sports Literati turn back the pages on a hockey classic, Peter Gzowski's The Game of Our Lives, a behind the scenes account of the 1980-81 Edmonton Oilers, led by a young Wayne Gretzky. They also discuss hockey as Canada's national myth, and whether it is still at the core of Canada's national identity today.

This month, the Sports Literati reconvenes to discuss the memoir of their collective, favourite basketball player of all time! And no, it's not Lebron James!