Most Americans view ping pong as either a basement recreation or the focus of a fraternity-party drinking game. Yet table tennis is an Olympic sport and one of the most popular athletic activities in the world. The Ping Pong Player and the Professor is a quirky memoir about the adventures of a Jewish anthropologist and his son, an elite player, in the colorful subculture of this extraordinary sport. The tale of their exploits in this hidden world is peppered with anthropological wisdom-the professor can't help himself-on a range of topics, including ethnicity, religion, sport, family, and how humans create and discover meaning in life. At its core The Ping Pong Player and the Professor is a heartwarming love story about the relationship between a father and son, two introverts who share a common bond over a nine-foot by five-foot table.

Richard Sosis is the James Barnett Professor of Humanistic Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. He is the coauthor of Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics and Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion and Violence, and cofounder and coeditor of the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior. He lives in Massachusetts, which he is still learning how to spell.