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The Code War
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September 12, 2012
The concept behind this book is a pretty good one, and was well worth exploring. It looks at the battle for supremacy between soccer and rugby (both of which were generally known as 'football' at the time, before anyone pulls me up on the 's' word) in Britain, mainly the north of England, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Williams clearly did a huge amount of research, uncovering a wealth of detail and anecdotes, and it makes for a very interesting read. On the downside, it tends to get bogged down in the details, rather than taking the occasional step back to analyse how and why events unfolded as they did. Additionally, some acknowledgement of events in the wider world beyond the UK - however brief - would have helped to put the story in context.
The book could also have benefited from a better edit, largely to tackle the author's bizarre tendency (or perhaps that of an eccentric editor or proofreader) to capitalise words that clearly should be in all lower-case - "the Club had begun work on a new Stadium", for example. Thanks to these hard-to-ignore flaws, I could only recommend the book to those with a serious interest in the subject.
Williams clearly did a huge amount of research, uncovering a wealth of detail and anecdotes, and it makes for a very interesting read. On the downside, it tends to get bogged down in the details, rather than taking the occasional step back to analyse how and why events unfolded as they did. Additionally, some acknowledgement of events in the wider world beyond the UK - however brief - would have helped to put the story in context.
The book could also have benefited from a better edit, largely to tackle the author's bizarre tendency (or perhaps that of an eccentric editor or proofreader) to capitalise words that clearly should be in all lower-case - "the Club had begun work on a new Stadium", for example. Thanks to these hard-to-ignore flaws, I could only recommend the book to those with a serious interest in the subject.
Displaying 1 of 1 review