book’s language is clear, even elegant. Eschewing preten- tious terminology, this study convincingly demonstrates that a simple, often colloquial, writing style offers the best medium for discussing the most complex of concepts in a fruitful manner. But what of the book’s whole? We discern four major points. First, the study aptly shows that the meanings of modern political values such as equality, fairness, and excellence—and the relationships among them—are not fixed but contingent and path dependent. Indeed, they exhibit “indispensable fictions” that are profoundly con- ventional and controversial and that get settled in ever new ways. Second, the book demonstrates that political norms always involve struggles and competition in civil society. Here is the locus in which ideals such as equality of opportunity emerge, become contested, and are (re)defined. While, as LaVaque-Manty argues, a stable democratic state makes it easier to raise claims to politi- cal and human dignity than a weak or undemocratic one, it can never make people autonomous and stipulate their respect-worthiness; this requires human agency. Third, the study informs us that we must pay attention to the scope of constraints set by “nature.” It is clear that natural constraints exist, but their exact nature remains forever part of political controversy (gender struggles being a case in point). There certainly exists no neutral bound- ary between the natural and the human side of sports. Fourth, the author does suggest that modernity’s cher- ished, yet often conflicting, ideals of equality and excel- lence can coexist. They are not zero sum but can be mutually reinforcing. Excellence in sports and elsewhere is necessarily positional, as competition and difference are part of its constitutive norm. But equality also fur- nishes one of the most compelling preconditions of excellence. All good and fine—but is this all there is to the fasci- nating arguments that this book displays? We find it sim- patico not to be bombarded by prefabricated omniscience, and we agree that it is not the role of the contemporary political theorist to act as a philosopher king. Abstaining from thick normative prescriptions is a good thing. LaVaque-Manty deserves much praise for relativizing our modern concepts and ideals without being a political rel- ativist.Yet precisely because of the book’s overall quality, we were a bit disappointed by its circumspection about getting at least some normative clarity as to where the author stands on some of these important issues. For example, we detect LaVaque-Manty’s faint melan- cholic praise for the idea of “honor,” which in our con- temporary world no longer has much cachet as a political ideal. But he never delineates with his otherwise impec- cable clarity what exactly honor—or any of the other qualities highlighted in this book—means to him (and should mean to us) in the here and now. Likewise, he states that women’s excellence as athletes shows that “emas- culation” does not entail any “dumbing down” of quality and competition, and that some laments about such are deeply problematic. But he fails to draw further conse- quences from these insights. Also, he finds claims that ignore the inherently competitive nature of sports “polit- ically unfortunate.” However, we would like to learn what the author values about meritocracy.True enough, things are contingent, much in flux, and we appreciate any scholar’s normative modesty. Yet precisely because we find LaVaque-Manty such an insightful thinker, we would have appreciated reading his views on these matters with a bit more boldness. In a way, he is aiming too low: In light of the exciting material presented, we view the cau- tious goal to “better understand our own values” some- what dissatisfying. The work’s strength also constitutes its weakness. Still, this is a rich book. LaVaque-Manty takes the study of sports from the margins to the center of political theory. His work initiates a new dialogue about the tensions of modern democracy’s ideals. He thereby moves the way we think about politics literally into different public arenas. Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture. By Andrei S. Markovits and Lars Rensmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 368p. $29.95. doi:10.1017/S1537592710003749 — Mika LaVaque-Manty, University of Michigan If your friends’ Facebook behavior is at all like that of mine, you will find the conclusions of Gaming the World compelling. Facebook status updates during the recent soccer World Cup, regardless of the location of one’s friends, seemed to confirm that in “postindustrial societies today, professional team sports are not just a crucial part of (global) popular culture but also significant agents of cultural change and global communication” (p. 26). Consider this: By watching Facebook status updates, you could tell that the soccer World Cup does grip the world’s attention, as Andrei S. Markovits and Lars Rens- mann argue. Moreover, one can tell that fandom can be local and simultaneously cross national and ethnic bound- aries (Chapter 2). That many Americans seem to breathe and eat and live soccer during the World Cup but not at other times, however, supports their argument that soc- cer’s current status in North America is still merely “Olym- pianized.” That means it is an object of immense interest every four years but not at other times (Chapter 3). And, finally, that one can make these observations on Facebook is inextricably tied to the authors’ argument that this is a phenomenon of “the second globalization” (p. 26): It is fostered by the economic, political, and technological devel- opments of the last couple of decades. It is significant, though, as the book shows, that this kind of globalization is a cultural-political phenomenon and not reducible to political economy. March 2011 | Vol. 9/No. 1 165