Shows how Africa's advance within world football is tied to its national political economy and how the balance of power with FIFA still favours its European members. BNS, 248pp, UK. FRANK CASS.

A vision of Africa's love affair with football as documented by celebrated Nigerian photographer and filmmaker Andrew Dosunmu. Punctuated with essays by journalist, Knox Robinson, it looks to soccer as a way to explore modern African life, culture and identity. Highlighting PUMA's relationship with football in Africa, as the official supplier of apparel and equipment to several football teams, the book follows a narrative of the sport through Cameroon, Senegal, Togo, Cote d'Ivoire, Angola, Ghana, Tunisia and Egypt. The book mixes classic portraiture and gripping reportage-style photography to frame Africa, its sporting heritage and its vibrancy. 352pp, USA. POWERHOUSE BOOKS.

From Accra and Algiers to Zanzibar and Zululand, African football today reflects the history and culture of those who play the game and how they have shaped it in a distinctively African manner. Football may obey global rules, but the influence of magicians and healers, the nurturing of different tactics and styles of play, and local forms of spectatorship give football in the continent a cultural and sporting imprint all of its own. 320pp, UK. HURST & CO.

Football inspires competition and inflames passions nowhere as strongly as in Africa. Take the player born and raised in Congo who scored the winning goal for Rwanda against the country of his birth and promptly had his house burnt down for his trouble. Or the Kenyan football chant 'Oliech! Odinga! Obama!', which celebrates the country's star striker, its popular prime minister and its most famous adopted son. Meanwhile, the influence of African football continues to spread rapidly through Europe. Today, no Premiership team is complete without a major African star - Drogba, Essien, Toure, Adebayor, and Kanu. Countless African players are now enriching English football and becoming household names. 352pp, UK. CANONGATE.

Through this photographic journey football is demonstrably available to anyone who can make a ball from the materials around them. It is the ultimate democratic sport. It also shows through photographic genius that the making of a soccer ball is no simple task and pays tribute to the creativity and diligence of poor communities everywhere. Countries covered: South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast. 208pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JESSICA HILLTOUT.

New in paperback. In June 2010, South Africa hosts football's World Cup, the most significant global sporting spectacle ever to take place on the continent. South Africa's successful bid was unsurprising - the sport thrives in Africa, and is vitally important, just as African footballers have become increasingly important in football at the highest levels. This fascinating book traces the development of the sport in Africa, finding out what makes African football unique and examining how the game fits into the social and political life of the continent. 304pp, UK. PORTICO.

A social analysis of football within Africa, featuring case study essays drawing heavily on detailed fieldwork in African communities. Also includes a study of international migration of African football players. BNS, tables, maps, 304pp, UK. PALGRAVE/MACMILLAN, 0333919793

Photographs of grassroots football in Africa, seeking to illuminate the inherent purity of the beautiful game by capturing, at grassroots level, Africa's relationship with this most popular of sports. Goode has realised that the beauty and purity of the game can be found, far from the money and celebrity it sometimes brings to mind, in the children of the poorest places on earth. Both a social documentary and photographic journey, this books highlights not only Africa's passion for football, but also the maladies that beset the continent, and footballs potential role as a balm for those maladies.. JACANA MEDIA.

A collection of essays considering women's football in a global context and examines its progress and the challenges and problems it has faced. The authors discuss whether governments, national and local, will meet their obligation to assist women in the quest for equal opportunities in soccer throwing into sharp relief the changing role of women in sport and society. Chapters include 'Football Feminine Development of the African Game: Senegal, Nigeria and South Africa'. Other countries discussed include England, the USA, India, New Zealand, China, Korea, Brazil, Sweden and others. Index, bib, b/w illus, 286pp, UK. ROUTLEDGE.