Between games

摘要

The Waterstone's bookshop up the street from The Economist has recently added a large new display shelf. Alongside the usual categories of fiction, biography and travel, there is "World Cup". As millions of football supporters gear up for the beginning of the tournament on June 9th, it seems that there is a significant group for whom simply watching the game is no longer enough. They want whole tomes about football, too. Of the scores of football books published in the last few months, two of the best are re-issues of old classics and the third a more recent medita- tion on the nature of English football.