Barbaric Sport: a global plague, By Marc Perelman

As a totalitarian "summer of sport" looms, a gold medal to Marc Perelman for this bracingly bilious counterblast against the new "planetary religion".

Perelman (a Parisian academic) draws on Freud, Marx and the Frankfurt School critique of mass spectacle as a collective narcotic. But even the non-theoretical will relish a furious assault not just against doping, bribery and political abuse - at the Olympics or World Cup – but on the global power of sport itself. He doesn't seek reform, a return to amateur innocence. The final verdict? "There should be no sport."