For over a century, Brazil's people, politicians, and poets have found in soccer the finest expression of their collective potential. Here David Goldblatt offers an extraordinary chronicle of a nation that has won the World Cup five times and produced such players as Pelé, Garrincha, Zico, and Ronaldo. Yet there is another side to Brazil and "the Beautiful Game," and Goldblatt also explores the grinding poverty that creates a vast pool of hungry players, and the pervasive violence that has seeped onto the field and into the stands.