NANTUCKET, Mass. — Widely published academic and global soccer observer Dr. Andrei Markovits will publish via Dickinson-Moses Press (DMP) an updated, second edition of his feted 2019 book, Women in American Soccer and European Football: Different Roads to Shared Glory, according to DMP President and CEO Matthew Stanley.

Markovits chose the boutique publisher on account of the sales, literary and aesthetic performance of DMP’s July 2022 release, Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & The Making of Soccer in America.

“We couldn’t be more pleased that Dr. Markovits has hand-picked Dickinson-Moses for his new edition,” reports Stanley. “We are doubly pleased that our relationship came about organically, on account of the success and presentation of another DMP title, Generation Zero. Hal Phillips’ book was our very first foray in the soccer category. If its presentation and quite remarkable sales have garnered the attention of other respected, soccer-centric authors, so much the better. With World Cup 2022 looming, and the FIFA Women’s World Cup scheduled for summer 2023, the timing certainly could not be better.”

Generation Zero and a dose of kismet are the tissues connecting these two soccer-publishing success stories. Released in July 2022, Hal Phillips’ popular history of the modern American soccer movement quickly earned best-seller status on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com. Walmart added the title Oct. 10. It remains a growing presence on the shelves of what Stanley calls “the proverbial finer independent bookstores everywhere.”

Phillips tells the exuberant, meticulously researched, sometimes personal story of how soccer finally entered the American mainstream. The author doesn’t merely celebrate the pivotal 1989-90 U.S. Men’s National Team; he connects it with the Youth Soccer Revolution that spawned it, along with dozens of telltale cultural events throughout the 1970s and ‘80s.

In supporting this narrative arc, Phillips cites several passages from Markovits’ 2001 book, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism, a widely admired work published by Princeton University Press and co-authored with Steven Hellerman. “We didn’t know each other at all, Andy and I,” Phillips explains. “However, I knew his work, of course, and reckoned it was worth sending along my manuscript — to see if he might ‘blurb’ Generation Zero, meaning offer up a testimonial for the book jacket.”

“As I was putting the finishing touches on my own reissue,” Dr. Markovits confirms, “Hal Phillips’ wonderful book, Generation Zero, reached me. Apart from loving the book’s content, I was also taken by its fine appearance. Queried about it, Hal introduced me to Marla Markman who oversaw his book’s production from A to Z. I am thrilled and honored that I could avail myself of the same two resources for my book: Marla’s expertise and Dickinson-Moses as my publisher.”

Generation Zero was not merely DMP’s first soccer volume: It was the author’s book-length debut — after 35 years as a working journalist and media executive. Its reception has proved beyond warm:

• For much of the summer and early fall, GZ proved the best-selling soccer title on Amazon, in multiple categories.

• Phillips has since supported the book with a series of high-profile magazine features (Soccer America, National Soccer Hall of Fame, Howler.) in addition to podcast appearances and speaking engagements, the next of which — scheduled for Nov. 17, on the eve of the World Cup — is entitled Soccer & America’s Slow Embrace of Internationalism.

• To meet this popular demand, Dickinson-Moses released a full-color Collector’s Edition of Generation Zero in mid-October 2022.

By contrast, Dr. Markovits — the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan, where he’s also a distinguished professor of Political Science and Sociology — has been prolifically researching and writing on soccer since the late 1980s. Offside proved a classic in the field, as did a succeeding article from he and Hellerman, “Women’s Soccer in the United States: Yet Another American ‘Exceptionalism’ ”, which appeared in the academic journal Soccer & Society (2003). This piece was then reprinted and published in one of the first international anthologies devoted to women’s soccer, edited by Fan Hong and J.A. Mangan under the title Soccer, Women, Sexual Liberation: Kicking Off a New Era, published by Frank Cass in London. Markovits and Lars Rensmann then devoted a detailed chapter to the women’s game first in their German-language book Querpass: Sport und Politik im transatlantischen Raum, published by Verlag die Werkstatt (2007), and subsequently in their volume Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture, published by Princeton University Press in 2010.

All this scholarship and publishing activity, and the rapid development of women’s soccer worldwide, served as prelude to the original publication of Women in American Soccer and European Football: Different Roads to Shared Glory, prior to the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France.

“Enter 2022 with its incredibly unexpected European Championship!” Markovits says, referring to the women’s tournament held to great acclaim and fan interest last summer, across England. “I simply could not believe my eyes as to how far the women’s game had come in terms of drawing global attraction and popularity. Truth be told, I — like many others, particularly men — was stunned by what occurred daily on my television screen back home in Ann Arbor, but also in print and social media. I knew that I was fortunate enough to witness a major cultural shift that went well beyond the game of Association football, with implications for all aspects of our public and private lives. I began to conduct research on this event – and its related sister tournaments in Africa and South America [2022 Copa América Femenina]. Thus, I thought, why not re-publish the earlier book from 2019 with a new section called ‘Epilogue’ featuring my new work, in anticipation of the Women’s World Cup 2023, to be held in Australia and New Zealand.”

Now in production, Markovits' newly updated volume is currently scheduled to be published and released, via Dickinson-Moses Press, in February 2023.

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