Beyond a Boundary

This new edition of C. L. R. James's classic Beyond a Boundary celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of one of the greatest books on sport and culture ever written.Named one of the Top 50 Sports Books of All Time by Sports IllustratedBeyond a Boundary . . . should find its place on the team with Izaak Walton, Ivan Turgenev, A. J. Liebling, and Ernest Hemingway.-Derek Walcott, The New York Times Book ReviewAs a player, James the writer was able to see in cricket a metaphor for art and politics, the collective experience providing a focus for group effort and individual performance. . . . [In] his scintillating memoir of his life in cricket, Beyond a Boundary (1963), James devoted some of his finest pages to this theme.-Edward Said, The Washington PostA work of double reverence-for the resilient, elegant ritualism of cricket and for the black people of the world.-Whitney Balliett, The New YorkerBeyond a Boundary is a book of remarkable richness and force, which vastly expands our understanding of sports as an element of popular culture in the Western and colonial world.-Mark Naison, The NationEverything James has done has had the mark of originality, of his own flexible, sensitive, and deeply cultured intelligence. He conveys not a rigid doctrine but a delight and curiosity in all the manifestations of life, and the clue to everything lies in his proper appreciation of the game of cricket.-E. P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working ClassBeyond a Boundary is . . . first and foremost an autobiography of a living legend-probably the greatest social theorist of our times.-Manning Marable, Journal of Sport & Social IssuesThe great triumph of Beyond a Boundary is its ability to rise above genre and in its very form explore the complex nature of colonial West Indian society.-Caryl Phillips, The New Republic