The Books Briefing: What We Read About When We Read About Sports

Soccer season is officially here, and as fans know, there’s more to the sport than those ever GIF-able goals, players’ celebratory dances, stunning footwork, or the World Cup. Gwendolyn Oxenham’s and Sebastian Abbot’s consider the “ethics and effectiveness” of how young soccer players are selected or discarded on the path toward professional careers, and how these experiences often differ between women’s and men’s teams. (Women’s soccer teams also must contend with pay inequity and, as a new filed by the U.S. women’s national team claims, “institutionalized gender discrimination.”) Outside the game,