Walter LaFeber, the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History at Cornell University, is the author of Inevitable
Revolutions, The American Age, and The Clash, all available in Norton paperback.
Review
"Now the experience of sports is everywhere. It's all encompassing, and instantaneous. It's right there
beside you from cradle to grave . . . the culture of the world."
--Phil Knight, founder and head of Nike
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Web Site, March, 2000
Summary
One of America's noted historians tells us how, by using the image and idea of Michael Jordan, the most famous
athlete in history, transnational corporations are spreading "the American Way of Life."
One man, inconceivably famous and idolized worldwide. One company and its founder, who saw the connection between
Jordan and a world waiting to buy. A revolution in media, creating a new era in global relationships. The coupling
of these forces opened the way for the spread of American cultural domination in dozens of smaller, poorer nations,
and in its wake hundreds of other corporations have followed.
This is a book like no other -- part biography, part social history, part far -- ranging economic critique. Walter
LaFeber's discussion of Nike's particular dominion over the world marketplace is often (and justifiably) scathing,
while his fascinating, always surprising biography of Michael Jordan and the long commercial history of basketball
reveal much about American society. LaFeber has written a primer on an issue that is already being widely debated:
how the devices of triumphant capitalism, coupled with hi-tech telecommunications, are conquering all the nations
of the world, one mind -- one pair of feet -- at a time.
