Omni Personal Shopper: The Soccer-Loving Thirtysomething Husband

Today's episode of our Omni Personal Shopper adventure comes from a woman trying to find the perfect book for her well-read, soccer-loving husband.

I'm always on the lookout for good books that my husband will like (32 yrs old). He loves to read but is not very into fiction (although I'm still trying to find novels I can get him interested in). One of his favorite subjects is History (particularly anything to do with Europe--he lived in Vienna for several years, and also in Croatia, so he's interested in that part of the world). But he also LOVES soccer as well as travel-related things (but not just your typical mountain climbing stories). One of his favorites was The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, and of course he's already read Fever Pitch. He also enjoyed The Lost City of Z and Agent Zigzag this year. Any other suggestions?

We've fielded this lineup of titles that we think he might enjoy.

• Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
  Daphne pointed out that this soccer enthusiast has surely already read the memoir of the former Granta editor and Mario Batali apprentice--one of the most obsessive literary explorations of a sub-culture out there.

• The Ball Is Round by David Goldblatt
  Tom and I both instantly thought of this one. Tom calls it "An excellent pairing of soccer and history--encyclopedic on both subjects, arguing that you can't tell one story without the other (there are almost as many index entries, for instance, on Argentina's Juan Peron as on Diego Maradona). It's fast-moving and fascinating: one of the quickest 1,000-page books I've ever inhaled."

• Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer by David Winner
  Tom also suggested this eccentric pick, calling it "one of my all-time favorite covers [referring to the out-of-print edition] as well as one of my all-time favorite subtitles, and which grounds an entertaining analysis of the legendary Dutch "Total Football" in the '70s in the overall Dutch postwar culture."

• Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games by Tennent H. Bagley
  Seeing that this fellow enjoyed Agent Zigzag, Jon thought of Tennent H. Bagley's account of the strange case of KGB agent Yuri Nosenko as he "vividly recounts the chess match between the rival intelligence agencies during the opening salvos of the Cold War. It’s as cloak-and-dagger as any LeCarre fan could hope--double-agents, miniature cameras hidden behind neckties, microfilm, and other trappings of the spy game abound in this fascinating and fast-paced real-life thriller"

• Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
  If he liked The Lost City of Z, then David wanted to make sure you knew about "the story of Henry Ford's ill-advised attempt to transform raw Brazilian rainforest into homespun slices of Americana." 

• The Tourist by Olen Steinhaur
  Anne says "It’s a smart, paranoia-fueled spy thriller about a former CIA field agent who’s forced to revisit a dark past that takes him away from his NYC desk job and back to the international stage. Lots of breathtaking armchair travel here with a hugely suspenseful and sophisticated plot"

• The Defector by Daniel Silva
  Another Anne pick: "This is also spy-suspense, and it jumps from one glorious location to the next: kind of like James Bond meets Dan Brown. But the rub here is that Daniel Silva writes with the verve and chops of a foreign correspondent (which he used to be before turning to fiction): the plot is twisty and intelligent and commanding but never fails to move along at a breakneck pace."

--BTP