New Books In World Affairs

“We live in the age of globalization, with the interconnection of markets, technology, and cultures making the world a smaller place.” Sure.Tell that to the guys on my local sports radio show. For them, the world is bounded by the Big Ten and the North Division of the National Football Conference, the groupings to which our state’s college and pro football teams belong. Other teams? Other games? Conferences in other parts of the country? Those barely rate a mention.And different sports, in other parts of the world? They don’t even exist. Tune to your local sports radio station or open the sports page and you’ll find the same, whether you’re in America or Europe: the average fan remains intensely regional–maybe even tribal–in his sports interests. But as Andrei Markovits argues, globalization is creeping into sports. At the University of Michigan, where Andy is an Arthur Thurnau Professor and Karl Deutsch Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies, European students follow their countrymen in the N