Here’s Our Defector Reads A Book Selection For August

An impressive feat: In nearly two years of DRAB-ing at Defector, we've managed to avoid reading anything that could be classified as a "sports book." But we are sports sickos at heart. Naturally, we've found the sports in all we've read, whether in the reckless warrior culture of Beowulf, or in washed-up Tom Buchanan, "forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game." We won't have to search so hard this time. In fact, here's a chance to do the opposite, to find the something else in sports. Our August pick is the Trinidadian thinker and writer C.L.R. James's Beyond A Boundary, a memoir on cricket and colonialism. The author puts it best: "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" We'll be chatting about it here on Wednesday, August 31.

If you’re interested in participating in the discussion this month, we recommend looking for a copy at your local library, stopping by an independent bookstore, or heading over to Bookshop.org. (There, you’ll also find a list of previous Defector Reads A Book selections and some other staff favorites.)

We don't usually do DRABs on Wednesdays, so make sure to mark that it is indeed Wednesday, August 31 that we will be discussing the book. We’ll make sure to send out a reminder in The Cipher, the daily newsletter that goes out to all Pal-and-up subscribers. Happy reading!