Ajax, the Dutch, the War

Ajax, the Dutch, the War

Author: Simon Kuper

Publisher: Bold Type Books

Published: 2012-09-11

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1568587244

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A passionate, haunting and moving work that tells the breathtaking story of how Dutch Jews survived the unspeakable and came to play a strong role in the rise of the most exciting and revolutionary style of soccer -- "Total Football" -- the world had ever seen. When most people think about the Netherlands, images of tulips and peaceful pot smoking residents spring to mind. Bring up soccer, and most will think of Johan Cruyff, the Dutch player thought to rival Pele in preternatural skill, and Ajax, one of the most influential soccer clubs in the world whose academy system for young athletes has been replicated around the globe. In Ajax, The Dutch, The War: Soccer in Europe During the Second World War, bestselling author Simon Kuper shows how the story of soccer in Holland cannot be understood without investigating what really occurred in this country during WWII. For decades, the Dutch have enjoyed the reputation of having a "good war." The myth is even resonant in Israel where Ajax is celebrated. The fact is, the Jews suffered shocking persecution at the hands of Dutch collaborators. Holland had the second largest Nazi movement in Europe outside Germany, and in no other country except Poland was so high a percentage of Jews deported. Kuper challenges Holland's historical amnesia and uses soccer -- particularly the experience of Ajax, a club long supported by Amsterdam's Jews -- as a window on wartime Holland and Europe. Through interviews with Resistance fighters, survivors, wartime soccer players and more, Kuper uncovers this history that has been ignored, and also finds out why the Holocaust had a profound effect on soccer in the country. Ajax produced Cruyff but was also built by members of the Dutch resistance and Holocaust survivors. It became a surrogate family for many who survived the war and its method for producing unparalleled talent became the envy of clubs around the world.


Brilliant Orange

Brilliant Orange

Author: David Winner

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2012-06-04

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1408835770

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The Netherlands has been one of the world's most distinctive and sophisticated football cultures. From the birth of Total Football in the sixties, through two decades of World Cup near misses to the exiles who remade clubs like AC Milan, Barcelona, Arsenal and Chelsea in their own image, the Dutch have often been dazzlingly original and influential. The elements of their style (exquisite skills, adventurous attacking tactics, a unique blend of individual creativity and teamwork, weird patterns of self-destruction) reflect and embody the country's culture and history. This book lays bare the elegant, fractured soul of the Dutch Masters and the culture that spawned them by exploring and analysing its key ideas, institutions, personalities and history in the context of wider Dutch society.


An Untouched House

An Untouched House

Author: Willem Frederik Hermans

Publisher: Archipelago

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1939810078

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“Profoundly unsettling . . . haunt[s] the mind for long afterwards.” —The Sunday Times “The kind of book that stays with you forever.” —The Guardian “Hugely entertaining." —The Scotsman A Sunday Times Book of the Year: A brooding meditation on violence set during World War II—from a classic Dutch writer who has drawn comparisons to Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut In this mesmerizing, dark meditation on the legacy of war, an interloper and opportunist makes a grand house of his own in the chaos of a war-torn countryside—only to find himself involved with occupying forces and enraged locals.


Spies, Lies, and Exile

Spies, Lies, and Exile

Author: Simon Kuper

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2021-06-23

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1620973766

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“Fascinating, rich, and probing . . . a beguiling and endlessly interesting portrait”—The Wall Street Journal For fans of John le Carré and Ben Macintyre, an exclusive first-person account of one of the Cold War’s most notorious spies “Kuper provides a different and valuable perspective, humane and informative. If the definition of a psychopath is someone who refuses to accept the consequences of his actions, does George fit the definition? There he sits, admitting it was all for nothing, but has no regrets. Or does he?” —John le Carré Few Cold War spy stories approach the sheer daring and treachery of George Blake’s. After fighting in the Dutch resistance during World War II, Blake joined the British spy agency MI6 and was stationed in Seoul. Taken prisoner after the North Korean army overran his post in 1950, Blake later returned to England to a hero’s welcome, carrying a dark secret: while in a communist prison camp in North Korea, he had secretly switched sides to the KGB after reading Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. As a Soviet double agent, Blake betrayed uncounted western spying operations—including the storied Berlin Tunnel, the most expensive covert project ever undertaken by the CIA and MI6. Blake exposed hundreds of western agents, forty of whom were likely executed. After his unmasking and arrest, he received, for that time, the longest sentence in modern British history—only to make a dramatic escape to the Soviet Union in 1966, five years into his forty-two-year sentence. He left his wife, three children, and a stunned country behind. Much of Blake’s career existed inside the hall of mirrors that was the Cold War, especially following his sensational escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison. Veteran journalist Simon Kuper tracked Blake to his dacha outside Moscow, where the aging spy agreed to be interviewed for this unprecedented account of Cold War espionage. Following the master spy’s death in Moscow at age ninety-eight on December 26, 2020, Kuper is finally able to set the record straight.


Soccer Under the Swastika

Soccer Under the Swastika

Author: Kevin E. Simpson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781442261624

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This book reveals the surprising role soccer played during World War II. It uncovers many survivor testimonies and old accounts of wartime players, revealing hidden stories of soccer in almost every Nazi concentration camp. To these prisoners, soccer was a glimmer of joy amid ...


Ajax, the Dutch, the War

Ajax, the Dutch, the War

Author: Simon Kuper

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780752851495

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"In looking into the lives of individual players, club officials and ordinary fans during this tumultuous period Simon Kuper has skilfully pieced together an alternative account of World War II, one seen through the lens of football. He also widens the scope to take in England, France and Germany, and in depicting a continent obsessed with football during war-time - on the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, ninety thousand spectators were in place for the kick-off of the German league final in Berlin - he challenges accepted notions of the war in occupied Europe."--BOOK JACKET.


Dynamo

Dynamo

Author: Andy Dougan

Publisher: Lyons Press

Published: 2004-09

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781592284672

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The amazing true story of a soccer team, re-formed from the players of the great Dynamo and Lokomotiev Kiev squads in the chaos of World War II, that played out one fateful summer season of matches.


The Barcelona Complex

The Barcelona Complex

Author: Simon Kuper

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-08-16

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0593297733

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With rare and unrivaled access, bestselling coauthor of Soccernomics and longtime Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world—and how that era is now ending FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. At last count, it had approximately 214 million social media followers, more than any other sports club except Real Madrid CF—and by one earlier measure, more than all thirty-two NFL teams combined. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. No wonder its motto is “More than a club.” But it was not always so. In the past three decades, Barcelona went from a regional team to a global powerhouse, becoming a model of sustained excellence and beautiful soccer, and a consistent winner of championships. Simon Kuper unravels exactly how this transformation took place, paying special attention to the club’s two biggest stars, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi, who is arguably the greatest soccer player of all time. Messi joined Barça at age thirteen and, more than anyone, has been the engine and standard-bearer of Barcelona’s glory. But his era is coming to an end—and with it, a once-in-a-lifetime golden run. This book charts Barça’s rise and fall. Like many world-beating organizations, FC Barcelona closely guards its secrets, granting few outsiders access to the Camp Nou, its legendary home stadium. But after decades of writing about the sport and the club, Kuper was given access to the inner sanctum and the people behind the scenes who strive daily to keep Barcelona at the top. Erudite, personal, and capturing all the latest upheavals, his portrait of this incredible institution goes beyond soccer to understand FC Barcelona as a unique social, cultural, and political phenomenon.


Football Against the Enemy

Football Against the Enemy

Author: Simon Kuper

Publisher: Orion Publishing Company

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 9780753805237

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Throughout the world football is a potent force in the lives of billions of people. Focusing on national, political and cultural identities, football is the medium through which the world's hopes and fears, passions and hatreds are expressed.


The Theater of War

The Theater of War

Author: Bryan Doerries

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2016-08-23

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0307949729

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For years theater director Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient Greek tragedies for a wide range of at-risk people in society. His is the personal and deeply passionate story of a life devoted to reclaiming the timeless power of an ancient artistic tradition to comfort the afflicted. Doerries leads an innovative public health project—Theater of War—that produces ancient dramas for current and returned soldiers, people in recovery from alcohol and substance abuse, tornado and hurricane survivors, and more. Tracing a path that links the personal to the artistic to the social and back again, Doerries shows us how suffering and healing are part of a timeless process in which dialogue and empathy are inextricably linked. The originality and generosity of Doerries’s work is startling, and The Theater of War—wholly unsentimental, but intensely felt and emotionally engaging—is a humane, knowledgeable, and accessible book that will both inspire and enlighten.