Price, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated
for 13 years and author of Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports
, finds his past in the most unfamiliar places when he moves to the south of France to report on European sports for a year. Inside his coverage of every new competition in every new city lurks Price’s profoundly American self-consciousness. Lambasted at every turn for Bush’s war on terror, Price’s American identity is formed defensively as he spars with European opponents over the war, politics and history. Luckily, Price couldn’t be further removed from the ugly American stereotype. He’s perceptive, open-minded and intelligent, transcribing Europe with the confident, lofty lyricism of an American sportswriter who has found his voice. His metaphors hit the mark, whether summing up the doping accusations against Lance Armstrong, eating eggs with Ted Williams, experiencing the fanaticism of the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry, exploring Europe’s obsession with soccer or sitting down with prospective NBA centers from the former Eastern bloc. Price is aware that the biggest action has a way of following him wherever he goes. Indeed, his memoir is a stroll through a minefield of recent European headlines—the train bombings in Madrid, the Le Pen vote scare in France and the 2004 Athens Olympics. The personal becomes political and the political gets personal in this travel memoir, as national identities and sports collide. (Sept.)
