Bounce: Six Balls, Six Sports, and the History of Globalization

An entertaining and original introduction to the debate over globalization through the history of six well-known pieces of sports equipment

“Each ball reveals a different aspect of today’s economy, its history, its rewards and its challenges. Roll them together and one gets a story about the prospects that globalized production poses for our economic future.” —from Bounce

Globalization is the central economic issue of our time. It is tied to everything we buy; it impacts who wins elections; and it can lead to the wholesale collapse (or revitalization) of towns, cities, and countries. And yet, for all its significance, globalization is still widely misunderstood—or just not understood at all. What’s been missing is a way in.

In Bounce, William Milberg, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, takes the game balls used in six popular sports—golf, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, and basketball—and goes deep into their complex and fascinating history, which is also the history of globalization. Each ball tells us unique and vital things about this evolution: the golf ball, for instance, uncovers the dynamics of the first wave of globalization, with colonial powers seeking rubber in the plantations of Africa, Asia, and South America, and the importance of machine technology and innovation. The football, on the other hand, shows how labor unions provided the “countervailing power” that workers needed against growing industrial corporations, prompting steady growth in pay and economic security for the average worker.

Globalization has been a series of choices, in other words—by individuals, corporations, and governments. In the vein of Simon Kuper’s Soccernomics and Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World, Bounce shows us how the history of these game balls helps us to understand the consequences of those choices and where we want the economy to go.