Spartak Moscow: A History of the People's Team in the Workers' State Book

"There are a great many things we understand only with our bodies." -Pierre Bourdieu

"The game is where we tell ourselves stories about ourselves." -Anthony King

I've always felt football was a fascinating way to study history and especially conflict, and the story of Spartak Moscow is a fascinating piece of the Russian and Soviet myth. There are real insights, and this book also explores what it was like to run a business in the Soviet Union, a fascinating layer of society in between the grey stories of faceless peasants and factory workers on the one hand or the well-connected and well-fed upper crust on the other.

I can't say I loved it because this book does get a bit bogged down when Edelman recounts famous games and seasons in a string of results and numbers without a lot of context. Of the many, many players and coaches and other influential figures in Spartak's history, only Nikolai and Andrei Starostin truly become fleshed out as vivid figures in that drama, but it is still a great tale and a good book, which should be enjoyed up by anyone with a fascination for sport or Russia.