Football

Name: Football
Brand: Penguin Press
SKU: 9780593490648
Price: 38.40 USD
Availability: InStock

$38.40

Product Variants

Biographical Note:
Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of ten nonfiction books (including The Nineties; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; and But What If We're Wrong?), two novels ( Downtown Owl and The Visible Man), and the short story collection Raised in Captivity. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ (London), Esquire, Spin, The Guardian (London), The Believer, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. He was raised in rural North Dakota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Brief Description:
"A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of readers-those who know it's football and those who are about to find out"-- Provided by publisher.

Review Quotes:
"Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties was one of the most interesting and satisfying nonfiction reads of 2022 for me, so I was thrilled to hear he was turning his inquisitive eye on American football next . . . I particularly enjoyed Klosterman's investigation of the socio-cultural layers of football in places like Texas and the Southeast." --Adam Morgan, Esquire

"[ Football] is a ball-knowing account of both the game and its place in American culture . . . Over the course of 11 essays, the best-selling author of the 1990s cultural post-mortem Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs frames this dumb, perfect sport with encyclopedic wit, mining its history, tracing its legends and puncturing its myths." --Kriston Capps, Bloomberg

"With humor, self-deprecation, and appropriate gravity, [Klosterman] considers why the sport is so popular; how it serves as the ultimate icebreaker among strangers; and whether it's being unfairly targeted for health risks to players. Football is not a polemic, nor is it a love letter. Think of it as a time capsule you don't need to wait to open." -- Elisabeth Egan, New York Times ("The Morning Newsletter")

"[An] essential playoff-season read." --People

"[ Football] is a wonderful addition to the genre . . . It's the exact book you'd expect from Klosterman, who has always dabbled in sportswriting or sports talking in his quest to explain the world through culture." --Jon Greenberg, The Athletic

" Football is unlike any book on the sport to come before: a hybrid of memoir, sports reporting, and cultural critique of both football and America itself . . . Klosterman's essays offer fresh, fascinating perspectives on a sport that has come to dominate the American consciousness like no other in recent decades." --Zack Ruskin, San Francisco Chronicle

" Football is . . . the most thorough exegesis since Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes of how the sport bewitches a man's mind, body, and soul, becoming something more than a pastime, nearly a coherent philosophy, and just short of a religion." --Derek Robertson, Washington Examiner

"[Klosterman] explores how football became the omnipresent phenomenon of America and a generational rite of passage. But he raises a fascinating point: football isn't necessarily 'too big to fail.' . . . I'm obsessed with this thesis." --Brandon Wenerd, BroBible

"As I complete this review, it is only the beginning of the third week of 2026. I will not be compiling a list of this year's best books for another 11 months. But I can say with great confidence that Football will be on there at the end of the year." --Stuart Shiffman, Book Reporter

"Chuck Klosterman's Football--an investigation of the socio-cultural layers of college football in places like Texas and the Southeast--is another masterwork from one of our greatest minds." -- Esquire

" Football features [Klosterman's] signature brand of humorous, sardonic and thought-provoking writing . . . A book worth keeping around and a great recommendation for the diehard and casual fan alike." -- Edward Banchs, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Klosterman's thoughtful and revealing exploration of his and America's obsession is insightful and richly infused with his engaging and entertaining perceptions." --Booklist

"It is not a controversial thing to say that football is America's game: it is violent, martial, and tribal; it makes billions of dollars and exploits thousands of people; it is brash and jingoistic, clinging all the while to an antiquated paternalism that fetishizes hierarchy and patriarchy. Yes, indeed, it is America's game. And if you have any doubts, there is no better writer alive than Chuck Klosterman to walk you through all of the above . . . and much, much more." -- Jonny Diamond, Lit Hub (Most Anticipated Books of 2026)

"Eye-opening and entertaining . . . Approaching the subject with rigor and drawing on his lifelong fascination with the game, Klosterman sheds light on football's 'outsized and underrated' role in shaping contemporary culture. The result is a transcendent appraisal of America's favorite sport." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Funny, thought-provoking . . . Marshalling [Klosterman's] customary blend of learned and low-culture references--Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC . . . a smart, rewarding consideration of football's popularity--and eventual downfall." --Kirkus (starred review)

"Klosterman is one of those writers whom I find it truly joyous to read, taking pure satisfaction in the simple act of reading words from a writer who cares about his craft, knows what he's doing, and is clearly having a blast. It doesn't matter what he's writing about: I find it actively fun to read him, and have done so for more than two decades now. Whenever he has a new book come out, I find it difficult not to finish it in one setting." --Will Leitch

"An excellent and highly conceptual book about America's favorite sport. Could this be the best book on (American) football ever?" --Tyler Cowen

Publisher Marketing:
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Could this be the best book on football ever?" --Tyler Cowen

"Another masterwork from one of our greatest minds." --Esquire

"[An] essential playoff-season read." --People

A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of readers--those who know it's football and those who are about to find out.

Chuck Klosterman-- New York Times bestselling critic, journalist, and, yes, football psychotic--did not write this book to deepen your appreciation of the game. He's not trying to help you become that person at the party, or to teach you how to make better bets, or to validate any preexisting views you might have about the sport (positive or negative). Football does, in fact, do all of those things. But not in the way such things have been done in the past, and never in a way any normal person would expect.

Cultural theorists talk about hyperobjects--phenomena that bulk so large that their true dimensions are hidden in plain sight. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched programs on U.S. television were NFL football games. This is not an anomaly. This is how society is best understood. Football is not merely the country's most popular sport; it is engrained in almost everything that explains what America is, even for those who barely pay attention.

Klosterman gets to the bottom of all of it. He takes us to a metaphorical projection of Texas, where the religion of six-man football merges with America's Team [ sic] and makes an inexplicable impact on a boy in North Dakota. He dissects the question of natural greatness, the paradox of gambling and war, and the timeless caricature of the uncompromising head coach. He interrogates the perfection of football's marriage with television and the morality of acceptable risk. He even conjures an extinction-level event. If Zizek liked the SEC more than he liked cinema, if Stephen Jay Gould cared about linebackers more than he cared about dinosaurs, if Steve Martin played quarterback instead of the banjo . . . it would still be nothing like this.

A century ago, Yale's legendary coach Walter Camp wrote his unified theory of the game. He called it Football. Chuck Klosterman has given us a new Camp for the new age, rooted in a personal history he cannot escape.

Review Citations: