Long considered Canadian, ice hockey is in truth a worldwide phenomenon--and has been for centuries. In Hockey: A Global History, Stephen Hardy and Andrew C. Holman draw on twenty-five years of research to present THE monumental end-to-end history of the sport. Here is the story of on-ice stars and organizational visionaries, venues and classic games, the evolution of rules and advances in equipment, and the ascendance of corporations and instances of bureaucratic chicanery. Hardy and Holman chart modern hockey's "birthing" in Montreal and follow its migration from Canada south to the United States and east to Europe. The story then shifts from the sport's emergence as a nationalist battlefront to the movement of talent across international borders to the game of today, where men and women at all levels of play lace 'em up on the shinny ponds of Saskatchewan, the wide ice of the Olympics, and across the breadth of Asia. Sweeping in scope and vivid with detail, Hockey: A Global History is the saga of how the coolest game changed the world--and vice versa.

本書は単なるスポーツ史の枠を超え、氷上の熱狂が世界を変容させていく様を壮大な叙事詩として描き出しています。二十五年もの歳月をかけた緻密な調査が結実した言葉の重みは、モントリオールでの誕生から世界中へと伝播していく過程を、単なる記録ではなく運命的な必然性を伴うドラマへと昇華させています。 文学的な見どころは、ナショナリズムの象徴だった競技が、国境を越えた才能の交流へと移行していく複雑なテーマ性にあります。凍った池での遊びが巨大な組織や文化へと変貌する過程は、鏡のように社会の縮図を映し出しています。氷上の軌跡を通じて人類の情熱と変遷を追体験させる、まさに魂を揺さぶる一冊です。