Playing Hard

  • Pages:240
  • Publisher:Cormorant Books
  • Themes:sports literature, fatherhood, father-son, father-daughter, father-child
  •  
  • Available:02/15/2025
Paperback
9781770867772
$24.95

Playing Hard is a tribute to the power of play in all its forms — a searching personal account of how play, games, and sports sanctify life and give it meaning. In this moving and wide-ranging examination, Peter Unwin reflects on life and relationships through the countless acts of play and the many unexpected places it is found.

Through a shared love of games, the author reconnects with his terminally ill father and is exposed to the complexities of his father’s past, of his experience of war and violence, and of a different but equally powerful commitment to the life of play.

From Snakes-n-Ladders to shooting pool, to an improbable soccer game in the Sahara, to first memories of playing baseball under catalpa trees — Peter Unwin examines the irresistible urge to have fun, reminding us that to live is to play, and to play hard is to live well.

"As a sports-illiterate reader in possession of nothing approaching athleticism, I nonetheless found Playing Hard irresistible. In his eloquent prose Unwin has fashioned the rules of play into a moving elegy for the passing of time, of a parent, and of the life well-played.”

– Gail Sidonie Šobat, Author, Performer, Founder of Youthwrite