Almost Everything You Ever Wanted to Know

Sport

'Tim Harris' book is awesome in its scope and detail. It claims, too modestly, to contain 'almost everything you ever wanted to know'. Almost?.... Anyone with a love of and interest in sport should keep this book within arms reach at all times' - Adrian Chiles

Staggeringly informative...succeeds in providing a fanatically comprehensive overview

If you ever wanted to know why boxing rings are square, why golf courses have 18 holes, why football is a game of two halves or why wickets have three stumps, this is the book for you

You look up one thing and find yourself still reading an hour later... Fabulous

Subtitles often mislead but this book really does explain almost everything you ever wanted to know about sport... A phenomenal acheivement. Can anyone know more about sport than Tim Harris?

Harris's book is a magnificent achievement. The scale of his research is breathtaking. His constant sprightliness is exemplary. This is a book that the discerning sports fan must read

Read this... from the history of stadia or the trivia behind sporting rules or why golf balls have dimples, this well-written book will help you take on any pub bore

After working in advertising for fifteen years, Tim Harris got involved in a pub argument about why football shirts tend to be striped and rugby shirts tend to be hooped. Thus began an obsession with the odd reasons and strange stories behind the games we take for granted. This book is the result. Like so many writers, Tim is married with two children and lives in North London.

Sport: Almost Everything You Ever Wanted to Know tells the history of sport. All sport. Ever. From ancient times to the 21st century. 
 
In eight themed parts, Tim Harris describes the triumphs and breakthroughs - as well as the cheating and skulduggery - that have created the modern world of sport. Dip into it, or read it cover to cover - there's a 'Oh - now I get it' moment on every page. 
 
Sport: it's unique, funny, amazingly comprehensive and packed with extraordinary anecdotes to turn any reader into a sporting expert.

The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685-1720

Revolution

The definitive account of the last great cataclysm to enfold Britain - the last successful invasion, the last major change of government

Gripping ... a much-needed reinterrogation

A magisterial work...confident prose, trenchant insight and vivid illustration

Tim Harris is Professor of History at Brown University, Rhode Island. He previously taught for some years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His last book was the widely praised Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660-1685 (published simultaneously with Revolution in paperback) which is a prelude to the current book.

To an extraordinary extent everyone in Britain still lives under the shadow of the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688. It was a massive, brutal and terrifying event, which completely changed the governments of England, Scotland and Ireland and which was only achieved through overwhelming violence. Revolution brilliantly captures the sense that this was a great turning point in Britain's history, but also shows how severe a price was paid to achieve this.

Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660-1685

Restoration

A major re-examination of one of the most gripping, disturbing periods in British history.

Tim Harris is Professor of History at Brown University. His previous books include London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II and The Politics of the Excluded.

The late seventeenth century was a period of extraordinary turbulence and political violence in Britain, the like of which has never been seen since. Beginning with the Restoration of the monarchy after the Civil War, this book traces the fate of the monarchy from Charles II's triumphant accession in 1660 to the growing discontent of the 1680s. Harris looks beyond the popular image of Restoration England revelling in its freedom from the austerity of Puritan rule under a merry monarch and reconstructs the human tragedy of Restoration politics where people were brutalised, hounded and exploited by a regime that was desperately insecure after two decade of civil war and republican rule.

Tim Harris

250 Men, Women and Animals Who Created Modern Sport

It may be natural to play games, but the sports we love aren't natural at all. Each and every one of them has been invented, tweaked, pushed and pulled to come up with better rules, cleverer tactics and more effective techniques. There are no prizes for guessing who invented the Cruyff Turn or the Fosbury Flop - but who invented the header or the sliding tackle? The dive pass or the scrum? The lob or the smash? The sand wedge or the tee? The googly or the flipper? 
 
This book introduces 250 men, women and animals, each of whom has transformed at least one major sport. Famous or infamous, remembered or forgotten, god-like or god-awful, the game was never the same after them. 
 
In making his selection, Tim Harris, author of Sport, has drawn on years of passion, argument and research to produce a list that is at once personal and authoritative, provocative and challenging: the rogues, rulers and revolutionaries who shaped the games we play today.

Tim Harris

Praise for Players

This book is a big winner

Superbly written

Books by Tim Harris

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