A comprehensive look at the 1972 Canada-USSR Hockey series and the way that Canadian mythology has been built around it, including essays on topics such as the impact of the summit series on the development of women's hockey, an analysis of media perspectives from the series and how the summit series helped to form Canada's identity abroad. This collection will be written in accessible prose, allowing it to read and enjoyed by a devotee of the game who is not an academic.

Brian Kennedy is Montreal-born and raised, and now teaches British and postcolonial literature as well as writing courses at Pasadena City College, California. He has PhD in contemporary British literature, and his previous publications include essays on Virginia Woolf, Henry James and Graham Greene, an edited book on California issues and books and academic articles on hockey and Canadian culture. He has held a research fellowship at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax; given presentations at the Bakhtin Centre at the University of Sheffield, England; and lectured on literature at colleges in Mumbai, India. His work has been translated into Russian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.

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"From cultural pluralism to national identity to concepts of unity, Kennedy masterfully organizes his book into four easily digestible sections. By utilizing a wide array of narratives, Coming Down The Mountain succeeds chiefly by protesting the simplicity of the good vs. evil approach as well as the antiquated view of the Summit Series as little more than a reassertion of Canada's dominance of the hockey world." - The Hockey Writers