New Books in Sports
Episodes
Matthew Algeo, “Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport” (Chicago Review Press, 2014)
04 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, before baseball drew crowds to America’s ballparks and English workers spent their Saturdays at the football grounds, one of the m...
Stefan Rinke and Kay Schiller (editors), “The FIFA World Cup 1930-2010: Politics, Commerce, Spectacle and Identities” (Wallstein, 2014)
01 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The history of globalization is found in more than international political organizations and multinational corporations, free-trade agreements and for...
J.C. Herz, “Learning to Breath Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness” (Crown Archetype, 2014)
18 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In industrial parks, converted warehouses, and pole barns across the country, a fitness revolution is taking place. It’s a revolution, according to ...
Roger Kittleson, “The Country of Football: Soccer and the Making of Modern Brazil” (University of California Press, 2014) and Joshua Nadel, “Fútbol! Why Soccer Matters in Latin America” (University Press of Florida, 2014)
24 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Passion. Flair. Instinct. Improvisation. As the World Cup advances to the knockout stage, you’ll hear these terms associated with the football style...
Travis Vogan, “Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media” (University of Illinois Press, 2014)
16 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Last weekend was the NFL Draft, the annual event when teams select college players who have shown the talent to advance to the professional ranks. Sta...
Lucia Trimbur, “Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason’s Gym” (Princeton University Press, 2013))
25 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a boxing gym. What probably comes to mind is a large, run-down room on the upper floor of an old brick building, somewhere in a trash-strewn, ...
Lincoln Harvey, “A Brief Theology of Sport” (SCM Press, 2014)
04 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Does God care who wins the game? According to a recent survey, plenty of American fans think so. The Public Religion Research Institute found that a q...
Brett Hutchins and David Rowe, “Sport Beyond Television: The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of Networked Media Sport” (Routledge, 2013)
20 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty years ago, when I was studying abroad in Europe, the only way to keep track of my teams back in the US was to sneak looks in The International ...
N. Jeremi Duru, “Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL” (Oxford University Press, 2011)
06 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Each year, following the end of the NFL season, there is a blizzard of activity as teams with disappointing records fire their head coaches and look f...
Jules Boykoff, “Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games” (Routledge, 2013)
07 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The 22nd Winter Olympics are underway. It’s safe to say that the lead-up has not gone smoothly. Of course, there have been the obligatory cost overr...
Sam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski, “Baseball Prospectus 2014” (Wiley, 2014)
05 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s episode features Sam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski, editors of the Baseball Prospectus’ 2014 (Wiley, 2014), a yearbook that both prev...
John Matthew Smith, “The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball” (University of Illinois Press, 2013)
29 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
One of the great dynasties of American sports are the UCLA men’s basketball teams of the 1960s-70s. In a twelve-year span, the Bruins won ten nati...
Susan Ware, “Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports” (UNC Press, 2011)
17 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re younger than 45 or so, you probably don’t remember the “Battle of the Sexes.” This tennis match, between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean...
The 2013 Year-End Episode
22 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
It’s that time of year when the panels of experts on sports call-in shows shout opinions on the best and worst of the past twelve months. To finish ...
Kevin Kerrane, “Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting” (CreateSpace, 2013)
13 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Kerrane‘s Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting (CreateSpace, 2013) represents the first major study of the history and...
Peter Westwick and Peter Neushul, “The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing” (Crown, 2013)
02 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Atlantic magazine recently asked its readers to name the greatest athlete of all time. The usual suspects were present among the nominees: Jesse O...
Lindsay Krasnoff, “The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010” (Lexington Books, 2012)
14 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In 1967, an official of the French basketball federation lamented the team’s poor finish at that year’s European Championships in Finland. The Fre...
The NBS Fall Seminar: Sports Memoirs
07 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most crowded sections of the sports library is the one devoted to autobiographies and memoirs. The shelves here are constantly adding new t...
David Little, “The Sports Show: Athletics as Image and Spectacle” (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
24 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Many fans store a vast collection of sports images in their brains. With just a moment’s glance at a picture, even a slice of the picture, they can ...
Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann (editors), “Africa’s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space” (University of Michigan Press, 2013)
05 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, for the first time, an African nation hosted the FIFA World Cup. The advertisements surrounding the tournament used graphics and sounds inten...
Tony Collins, “Sport in Capitalist Society: A Short History” (Routledge, 2013)
13 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the centuries, in cultures around the world, people have played games. But it has only been in the modern age, in the last 250 years or so,...
Chris Anderson and David Sally, “The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong” (Penguin, 2013)
01 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Two guys are watching Premier League highlights, when onto the TV screen comes Rory Delap, then with Stoke City, doing one of his renowned throw-ins f...
Eric Simons, “The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession” (The Overlook Press, 2013)
31 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In October 2007, journalist Eric Simons sat in the stands of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, Calif., to watch his beloved University of California Bea...
Peter Hansen, “The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment” (Harvard University Press, 2013)
09 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars have pointed to various historical ingredients they see as necessary for the development of modern sport: political changes that allowed peop...
Samir Chopra, “Brave New Pitch: The Evolution of Modern Cricket” (HarperCollins, 2012)
17 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The sixth season of the Indian Premier League recently concluded, and once again off-field problems cast light on the league’s growing pains. For th...
The NBS Summer Seminar: Sports Books for Children
04 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What did you read as a young sports fan? Maybe the sports pages in the local newspaper, or a glossy illustrated magazine? Did your school’s library ...
Ron Kaplan, “501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013)
17 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
WorldCat is the largest online catalog in the world, accessing the collections of more than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories. Using t...
Martin Kelner, “Sit Down and Cheer: A History of Sport on TV” (Bloomsbury, 2012)
15 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
I have never been to the Super Bowl, and I will probably never will. I’ve never been to a World Cup match or an Olympic event. I’ve never been to ...
Simon Martin, “Sport Italia: The Italian Love Affair with Sport” (I.B. Tauris, 2011)
29 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Azzurri, cyclists, boxers, Berlusconi, Balotelli, strapping Fascist men preparing to bear arms, strapping Fascist women preparing to bear children, th...
Andrew Zimbalist, “In the Best Interests of Baseball: Governing the National Pastime” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013)
15 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In 2008, when entertainment magnate Lalit Modi launched the Indian Premier League, he took a title that was new to the world of cricket: Commissioner....
Dennis Deninger, “Sports on Television: The How and Why Behind What You See” (Routledge, 2012)
20 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Did you watch the game last night? No matter if you live in Australia, England, India, Ontario, or the US, chances are you’ve heard that question to...
Steven Riess, “The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime: Horse Racing, Politics, and Organized Crime in New York, 1865-1913” (Syracuse University Press, 2011)
31 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In the classic 1973 film The Sting, Robert Redford and Paul Newman lead a team of con men in an elaborate scam to take revenge on a dangerous crime bo...
David George Surdam, “The Rise of the National Basketball Association” (University of Illinois Press, 2012)
08 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This past October, David Stern announced that he would step down as commissioner of the National Basketball Association in February 2014. In Stern’s...
The 2012 Year-End Book List Episode
19 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The sports pages, websites, and television channels are running their annual reviews of the year in sports. The 10 Best Photos! The 10 Biggest Plays...
Dave Gluck, “Rhythms of the Game: The Link Between Musical and Athletic Performance” (Hal Leonard, 2011)
05 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
“Around 380 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in the Republic about the idealized society as having a “united influence of music and sport” ...
Brett Bebber, “Violence and Racism in Football: Politics and Cultural Conflict in British Society, 1968-1998” (Pickering & Chatto, 2011)
29 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This past September an independent panel commissioned in 2009 by the British government released its 395-page report on the Hillsborough Stadium disas...
Declan Hill, “The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime” (McClelland & Stewart, 2010)
13 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are talking to Declan Hill about his new book The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime (McClelland & Stewart, 2010). Most of my research focuses o...
Andrei Markovits and Emily Albertson, “Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States” (Temple University Press, 2012)
09 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
My wife is a sports fan. Together, we have cheered from the stands at college football games and track meets, for local minor-league baseball clubs an...
Donald Spivey, “‘If You Were Only White’: The Life of Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige” (University of Missouri Press, 2012)
25 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Of all American sports, baseball has contributed the greater number of folk heroes to the larger culture. Fictional characters of awe-inspiring abilit...
Chris Cooper, “Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport” (Oxford University Press, 2012)
09 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This past August, the saga of Lance Armstrong came to its inglorious end. The seven-time champion of the Tour de France and Olympic medalist ended his...
Theresa Runstedtler, “Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line” (University of California Press, 2012)
24 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In the history of American sports, few athletes were as famous and hated in their day as Jack Johnson. The first African American boxing champion, Joh...
Guy Fraser-Sampson, “Cricket at the Crossroads: Class, Colour and Controversy from 1967 to 1977” (Elliott & Thompson, 2011)
08 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
During the 1960s attendance fell at cricket grounds across England. Just as the Church of England lost members in droves in the same period, it appear...
Laurent Dubois, “Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France” (University of California Press, 2011)
24 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
There are few moments in recent sports history as riveting, perplexing, and widely debated as Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt to Marco Materazzi in the ...
Greg de Moore, “Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport” (Allen and Unwin, 2011)
17 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
A number of modern sports are credited to a particular 19th-century founder. The inventive work of some of these figures, like basketball’s James Na...
Lisa Bier, “Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women’s Swimming, 1870-1926” (McFarland, 2011)
10 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
American women dominated the swimming competition at the London Olympics, earning a total of sixteen medals in seventeen events. This template of succ...
Kate Buford, “Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe” (Bison Books, 2012)
01 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
If you watched the U.S. broadcast of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, you may have heard Matt Lauer and Bob Costas mention Jim Thorpe d...
The NBS Summer Seminar: Understanding the Olympic Games
26 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The 2012 London Olympics are here. To mark the event, New Books in Sports offers another of its occasional seminar episodes. And as with any great...
David Davis, “Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2012)
19 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
26.2 is one of the most recognizable numbers in sports. It is also a curious number. The length of the marathon race is the only distance in track tha...
Brian Ingrassia, “The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football” (University Press of Kansas, 2012)
06 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
During this week of the 4th of July, it’s appropriate to mark America’s national holiday with a podcast about that most American of sports: colleg...
Kevin Young, “Sport, Violence and Society” (Routledge, 2012)
29 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The one play of my football career that my father remembers most fondly came in my very first game, when I was eleven years old. Younger and smaller t...
Timothy Grainey, “Beyond ‘Bend It Like Beckham’: The Global Phenomenon of Women’s Soccer” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012)
22 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Two days before this year’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the top two women’s clubs in Europe played on the same pitch...
David J. Leonard, “After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness” (SUNY Press, 2012)
15 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The NBA Finals are under way, with the Oklahoma City Thunder facing the Miami Heat. Network executives and the sports punditocracy are elated with the...
John Fox, “The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game” (HarperCollins, 2012)
07 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
There are a lot of balls in my house. Baseballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, footballs, basketballs, volleyballs. We have Wiffle balls, Nerf balls, an...
The NBS Spring Seminar: Understanding European Football
15 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
It’s springtime in the American Midwest. The playoffs for the NBA title and hockey’s Stanley Cup are moving into the later rounds, and the new bas...
Robert Lipsyte, “An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir” (Ecco, 2011)
07 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1957, Robert Lipsyte answered a classified ad. He was an English major who needed some cash, and The New York Times was looking for a...
Paul Dickson, “Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick” (Walker & Company, 2012)
30 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Mention the name Bill Veeck to a baseball fan and what will likely come to mind is the back-and-white image of three-foot, seven-inch Eddie Gaedel at ...
Robert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012)
23 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
There are three Americans in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One is Horace Wilson, the professor of English who brought his students outside for a...
Randy Roberts, “A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nation” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)
13 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Two weeks from now the National Football League will hold its annual draft of college football players. For the league’s teams, the draft is the cha...
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, “Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War” (Cambridge UP, 2010)
06 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
As a young, patriotic American, I was torn by the boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. On the one hand, I knew already as an eleven-year-old...
Paul Watson, “Up Pohnpei: A Quest to Reclaim the Soul of Football by Leading the World’s Ultimate Underdogs to Glory” (Profile Books, 2012)
29 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Coming to terms with the limitations of our own sporting achievement is one of the hardest things many of us have to do in life. A couple of years ago...
Richard Wilson, “Inside the Divide: One City, Two Teams, the Old Firm” (Canongate, 2012)
22 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Alabama-Auburn. Maple Leafs-Canadiens. Boca Juniors-River Plate. Carlton-Collingwood.Fenerbahce-Galatasaray. Great rivalries are the catalysts of nati...
Gideon Haigh, “Sphere of Influence: Writings on Cricket and Its Discontents” (Victory Books, 2010)
15 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
During his tenure as a university lecturer, the novelist (and former football goalkeeper) Vladimir Nabokov instructed his students that the reader of ...
Mary Louise Adams, “Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport” (University of Toronto Press, 2011)
08 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
On the Minnesota rinks where I spent many days of my childhood, the skates made the man–or the boy, to be more accurate. Hockey skates had a boot of...
John Bloom, “There You Have It: The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard Cosell” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010)
27 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Howard Cosell was fond of saying that American television in the 1970s was dominated by three C’s, representing each of the broadcast networks: reve...
Peter Millward, “The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
20 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the English Premier League’s birthday! On this day twenty years ago, all twenty-two clubs of the First Division resigned from the 104-year-ol...
Stephen Mumford, “Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion” (Routledge, 2011)
13 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Here is a quiz. What is your idea of the perfect sports-watching experience: a) watching your team crush its rival in a one-sided, humiliating contest...
Roy MacGregor, “Wayne Gretzky’s Ghost: And Other Tales from a Lifetime in Hockey” (Random House Canada, 2011)
06 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
For years, the morning skate was a Christmas Day ritual for my father and me.After the presents had been unwrapped and before the morning service, my ...
Andrew Ritchie, “Quest for Speed: A History of Early Bicycle Racing 1868-1903” (Cycle Publishing, 2011)
30 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
As several guests on this podcast have told us, sports have been fundamentally connected with the major developments of modern history: urbanization, ...
Adrian Burgos, Jr., “Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball” (Hill and Wang, 2011)
26 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The integration of baseball is most often cast in terms of black and white, but biographer Adrian Burgos, Jr.— a professor at the University of Illi...
Dennis Frost, “Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan” (Harvard UP, 2011)
24 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In the celebrity firmament that circles around us, sports stars are among the brightest lights. Kobe, Tiger, Messi, Márta, Sachin, and Serena can b...
Randy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale UP, 2010)
17 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
“I’m sure if it wasn’t for Joe Louis,” acknowledged Jackie Robinson, “the color line in baseball would not have been broken for another ten ...
The New Books in Sports 2011 Year-End Book List
09 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I am a fan of the end-of-the-year, double-size issues of magazines–full of photographs, lists of the best and worst of the year, notable quotes, and...
Andrei Markovits, “Gaming the World: How Sports Are Shaping Global Politics and Culture” (Princeton UP, 2010)
22 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
“We live in the age of globalization, with the interconnection of markets, technology, and cultures making the world a smaller place.” Sure.Tell t...
Ronald Reng, “A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke” (Yellow Jersey Press, 2011)
11 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
On November 10, 2009, Robert Enke stepped in front of an express train at a crossing in the German village of Eilvese. At age 32, Robert left behind a...
David Potter, “The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium” (Oxford UP, 2011)
01 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The Victor’s Crown brings to vivid life the signal role of sport in the classical world. Ranging over a dozen centuries–from Archaic Greece throug...
Jorge Iber, “Latinos in U.S. Sport: A History of Isolation, Cultural Identity, and Acceptance” (Human Kinetics, 2011)
26 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The 107th World Series is underway, with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers vying for the championship of Major League Baseball. The Cardin...
Teddy Jamieson, “Whose Side Are You On?: Sport, the Troubles, and Me” (Yellow Jersey Press, 2011)
17 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Here’s a sport quiz for you. Name a world-class athlete who hailed from the state of Nebraska: an Olympic champion, a hall of famer, someone who was...
Jennifer Ring, “Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball” (University of Illinois Press, 2009)
10 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
It’s October. In the American sports calendar, that means it’s time for the baseball playoffs. My team, the Minnesota Twins, wasn’t even close t...
Dave Zirin, “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World” (Haymarket Books, 2011)
04 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
There are beautiful sports photos, and dramatic sports photos. There are sports photos that are funny, and others that are poignant. There are photos ...
Kay Schiller and Christopher Young, “The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany” (University of California Press, 2010)
26 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
This past summer Germany hosted the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The 32 matches drew more than 800,000 fans, while the total number of foreign touri...
Scott Brooks, “Black Men Can’t Shoot” (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
19 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
With the NBA in the midst of a labor disagreement, players from the world’s premier basketball league are scattering in different directions to main...
Allen Guttmann, “Sports and American Art from Benjamin West to Andy Warhol” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011)
12 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When I was a kid, I used to pore over an illustrated history of American sports that I had received as a birthday gift. The oversized, hardcover book ...
Andrew Morris, “Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan” (University of California Press, 2010)
31 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
My Little League baseball career spanned the late Seventies and early Eighties. During those summers, I always set aside the afternoon in August when ...
Steve Bloomfield, “Africa United: How Football Explains Africa” (Canongate Books, 2010)
23 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
A couple of days ago I had an unusual experience. I was staying in a hotel in Kampala, with a stunning view of the southern reaches of the Ugandan cap...
John Eric Goff, “Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sports” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2009)
15 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The instructor of my freshman physics course fit the stereotype of a physics professor: unkempt white hair, black glasses case in the breast pocket of...
Evander Lomke and Martin Rowe, “Right Off the Bat: Cricket, Baseball, Literature & Life” (Paul Dry Books, 2011)
09 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Last spring’s Cricket World Cup was a major global event. Estimates of the television audience for the final matches ranged from 400 million to one ...
Tony Collins, “A Social History of English Rugby Union” (Routledge, 2009)
15 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Most modern sports have some creation myth that usually links them to an almost-sacred place of origin. Baseball has its Cooperstown. Golf its St. And...
Todd Denault, “The Greatest Game: The Montreal Canadiens, the Red Army, and the Night that Saved Hockey” (McClelland & Stewart, 2010)
05 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When sports fans list the greatest games, they talk about close contests, outstanding performances, and dramatic finishes. Think of game six of the 19...
Lee Congdon, “Baseball and Memory: Winning, Losing, and Remembrance of Things Past” (St. Augustine’s Press, 2011)
05 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
“Isn’t it funny?” once mused Buck O’Neil, the sage of Negro League baseball. “Everybody remembers going to their first baseball game with th...
Don Van Natta, Jr., “Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias” (Little, Brown, and Company, 2011)
23 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
My older daughter is twelve years old. Like many girls her age, she has spent countless hours on the soccer field. She has played volleyball and run c...
Michael Oriard, ” Brand NFL: Making and Selling America’s Favorite Sport” (UNC Press, 2010)
15 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
It is the summer of discontent for fans of the National Football League. What will they do if team owners and players cannot reach a labor agreement b...
Charles Clotfelter, “Big-Time College Sports in American Universities” (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
08 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Corruption in big-time college sports recently claimed another victim: Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel. Once regarded as a paragon of integrity,...
Gavin Mortimer, “The Great Swim” (Walker Books, 2008)
31 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I have the habit of reacting audibly when reading good works of non-fiction. Members of my household and strangers on airplanes have been startled by ...
Chuck Korr, “More Than Just a Game–Soccer vs. Apartheid: The Greatest Soccer Story Ever Told” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010)
26 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Chances are, if you were one of the 700 million people who watched the 2010 World Cup, you likely heard mention of the soccer games that prisoners on ...
Kurt Kemper, “College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era” (University of Illinois Press, 2009)
20 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of sports and the Cold War, what typically comes to mind are steroid-fueled East German swimmers, or the Soviets’ controversial basket...
Erik Jensen, “Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity” (Oxford UP, 2010)
01 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Here’s a simple–or should we say simplistic?–line of political reasoning: communities are made of people; people can either be sick or healthy; ...
Aram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010)
12 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But n...