The Awesome Game My Incredible, Globe-Crushing Hockey Odyssey

One man's search to answer the ultimate question in sports: Why is hockey so incredibly awesome?

Dave Hill--author, actor, rock musician and stand-up comedian--is a truly outstanding American. For one thing, he's part Canadian (an advantage he explored in his previous book Parking the Moose). For another, and maybe this has something to do with his Canadian heritage, he's a totally obsessive fan of hockey. That makes him a minority within a minority: apparently only five percent of the US population admit to liking hockey more than any other sport.

In his latest opus, Dave--who's from Cleveland, which hasn't had an NHL team since 1978--tackles this hockey conundrum with full force, drilling down into what makes hockey so damn important in so many parts of the world, despite the average American not recognizing the sport's preeminent greatness. His search for the very soul of hockey has taken him across the globe, from Poland to LA to Kenya, and brought him into contact with many of the sport's great and good. Humorous but heartfelt, Bill Bryson-like but hipper, this is arguably the greatest book ever written about hockey and definitely the one to be asking for at Christmas.

DAVE HILL is a comedian, writer, musician, actor, podcaster and man-about-town originally from Cleveland, Ohio, but now living in New York City. He is the author of three previous books, Parking the Moose, Dave Hill Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Tasteful Nudes, and has written for The New York Times, GQ, Salon, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, VICE, Guitar World and a bunch of other places. Comedy legend Dick Cavett called Dave "a major figure among American comic writers, past and present." Dave has appeared on such TV shows as Inside Amy Schumer and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, hosted for HBO and Cinemax, and performed live comedy around the world. For five years he hosted The Goddamn Dave Hill Show on the WFMU radio station in Jersey City. Dave is a frequent contributor to public radio's This American Life. He currently sings and plays guitar in the psych/garage rock band Painted Doll, the extremely extreme Norwegian black metal band Witch Taint, and the power pop band Valley Lodge, whose song "Go" is the theme to HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.