The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World

Ahead of the 2026 World Cup Final, join author and historian Tim Bascom for a discussion on his new book, The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World, which explores how soccer matters so much in our common, everyday lives, and how it brings the world closer together.

Tim Bascom, who learned to play soccer as a youth in Ethiopia, is the author of two prize-winning memoirs, Chameleon Days and Running to the Fire; two essay collections, The Comfort Trap and Climbing Lessons; a collection of short stories, Continental Drift; and the novel Squatters’ Rites.

About The Boundless Game

A lifelong soccer player and award-winning author shows us how the sport transcends races, ethnicities, cultures, and experiences and brings us all closer together.

Tim Bascom spent half his childhood in Kansas and the other half in East Africa. Living and traveling around the world, the game of soccer proved a constant truth. Through storytelling that effortlessly flows between poignant and funny, sobering and charming, Bascom explores why soccer matters so much in our common, everyday lives, and how this ordinary yet extraordinary game can bring us all a little closer together.

His passionate vision for this most global game leads Bascom to describe how soccer brought him sanity in the middle of a brutal revolution in Ethiopia and how bridging divisions of race and culture was key to success for teams he joined in Chicago and Kansas. From watching Arsenal’s energetic rise in the Premier League to the bravery of a besieged Afghanistan Women’s National Team, and from pickup games in the Midwest and the Middle East, Bascom finds universal truths and deeply human meaning in the beautiful game of soccer.