This book presents a unique yet accessible synthesis of anthropology, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and pyschosociology in the course of seeking the moral foundations of sport, providing a thought-provoking read. Following a highly personal introduction detailing his own sports biography, drawing contrasts between primates and humans based on anecdotes drawn from popular accounts of the work of Jane Goodall, Severson leads the reader on an intriguing journey through sport, in five chapters, paralleling the development of morality and ethics in sport to the imagined prehistoric experience and ongoing moral development of human beings. In doing so, the author reviews the entire spectrum of the sports experience. The various destinations (chapters) on this journey address the numerous roles through which we may engage in sport, whether as participant, spectator, coach, official, winner, loser, bully, or cheat. Interestingly, this is not an overly complex or difficult read as the title may suggest. In fact, the author does a wonderful job of weaving together captivating "analogies and anecdotes" from a selection of sports scenarios, with parallel reflections drawn from philosophical literature and common understandings of religious experience. It is the storytelling that makes this book so recommendable.
Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and graduate students. General readers.
— Choice Reviews
This is a remarkable and beautifully written book that conveys both a compelling evolutionary account of the origins of human morality, and a consistently insightful discussion of sport in relation to it. Players and fans, coaches and refs, competition and teamwork, winning and losing, fairness and cheating, ritual and play, authenticity and imitation—Severson’s book brings all of these into a sharper and more meaningful light, and does it with a style of storytelling that gives pleasure from start to finish. Anyone who loves sport, or loves thinking about it, will love this book.
— Walter Thomas Schmid, author of Golf as Meaningful Play