Editor's Note: Following in the first in what will hopefully be a series of book reviews on the site. Along with our extensive coverage of the competitive end of the game, Top Drawer Soccer intends to cover the culture of soccer, including literature, sociology and business. We hope you enjoy the expanded focus over the next several months.

Soccer in Sun and Shadow

By Eduardo Galeano; Translated by Mark Fried

Verso $17 244 pages (first published in 1998, revised and expanded in 2003)

Eduardo Galeano’s love for soccer drips from every page of this short, beautiful history of the game. Galeano is based in Uruguay and normally writes eloquently on politics in Latin America. He’s the author of such classics as The Open Veins of Latin America.

When Galeano turns his graceful pen to soccer, he does it with such skill and attention that there’s something on every page that might makes you laugh or cry. Soccer in Sun and Shadow is composed of about 200 short chapters that trace the history of soccer and describe – with insight and humor – all of its characters. A soccer fan, for example, goes to his stadium every week, looking forward to forgetting about his daily routines and the stresses of his life. Just as some people go to church, the soccer fan goes to the stadium, seeking spiritual sustenance. “In this sacred space, the only religion without atheists puts its divinities on display.”

Jose Manuel Moreno remembered

On another page, Galeano surprises with a story about an Argentinean soccer player. José Manuel Moreno played his best after carousing until dawn and drinking lots of wine with lunch on the day of his matches. For 20 years Moreno thrilled crowds throughout Latin American. In 1961, at the age of 45, Moreno had retired and was coaching Colombia’s Medellín against Argentina’s Boca Juniors. Medellín was losing, so Moreno changed into a uniform and scored two goals.

Year by year, World Cup by World Cup, Galeano tells stories about players, games, championships and everything related to soccer. As the years pass, he reminds the reader what else was going on in the world at the time the story takes place. These cultural and political notes touch on everything from the self-destruction of Yugoslavia to the self-destruction of Marilyn Monroe. Galeano also notes, repeatedly and with a little bit of cheek, that going back to when Fidel Castro first came to power in Cuba, “Informed sources in Miami announced the imminent fall of Fidel Castro.”

Galeano sets things straight

Galeano adores the game and hates the way history ignores it, but he also pierces the veil of ignorance when soccer’s importance is overstated. He writes about how a 1969 war between El Salvador and Honduras in which 4,000 people were killed is known as the Soccer War. But in reality, demagogic leaders had been stirring up hatred between the two countries for years, Galeano writes. “The lords of land and war didn’t lose a drop of blood, while two barefoot peoples avenged their identical misfortunes by killing each other with patriotic fervor.”

As the title suggests, Galeano covers the dark side of soccer, too. He writes about how poorly the players are treated and other crazy injustices. A club owner in Mexico suggested that Mexico’s powerful television company, Televisa, increase its paltry $1,000 payment to the clubs playing the games Televisa was broadcasting. The club president, Emilio Maurer, was arrested and forced into bankruptcy; his stadium was closed.

But Galeano continues to celebrate the joy – even ecstasy -- that soccer can bring. Remembering the 2002 World Cup, Galeano notes: “With no World Cup history, no stars, no obligation to win or trepidation about losing, Senegal played in a state of grace and was the revelation of the championship. … (S)occer is a game and those who really play it feel happy and make us happy too.”

Galeano calls himself a “beggar for good soccer.” For those of us who are beggars for soccer books, Soccer in Sun and Shadow is a richly rewarding book that must be read, and perhaps re-read.