By Brett L. Abrams Like many of you, I finished a book and quickly realized how much more work remained as one faced the challenges of marketing the work! Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality emerged from Rowman & Littlefield which is a good press with a small publicity department. Since I…
Flynn, Daniel J. The War on Football: Saving America’s Game. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2013. 1-172. Notes and index. $27.95 cloth. Reviewed by Russ Crawford In The War on Football, Daniel Flynn saw a concerted attack on the game by those who saw it as too violent and dangerous. The reasons he provides for this…
As everyone reading this assuredly knows, Colin Kaepernick renewed public discussions about the role of politics, protest, and activism in sport. This debate has surely picked up steam in the past couple of weeks with involvement from the Executive Branch. Casually browsing social media, I regularly encounter opinions on the matter that are quite frankly…
Carlson, Chad. Making March Madness: The Early Years of the NCAA, NIT, and College Basketball Championships, 1922-1951. Sport, Culture & Society Series. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2017. Pp xvi+475. Notes, index, images and appendices. $44.95 (cloth). Reviewed by Andrew R.M. Smith It takes me about an hour to suck the air out of a…
This is a cross post in partnership with the U.S. Intellectual History Blog. It will appear there on Wednesday. By Robert Fitzgerald, Guest Contributor At a recent rally in Huntsville, Alabama while stumping for Luther Strange, a Republican candidate for the Senate, President Trump said something that should concern everyone who cares about what it…
Gems, G.R., Borish, L.J., and Pfister, G. Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization, Second Edition. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2017. 385 pages (including images, index, and author information) US$89.00 (cloth cover). Reviewed by Matt Hodler Like many of us, I have both opted to use textbooks and not to use them when designing…
By Patrick Salkeld I attended my first NASSH conference in 2016 at Georgia Tech University. I met many scholars, found a home within the community, and spent much of my time talking to other soccer historians such as Zach Bigalke, George Kiousis, Chris Bolsmann, Chris Henderson, Gabe Logan, and David Kilpatrick. The soccer historians in…
Bowman, Paul. Mythologies of Martial Arts. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Pp. 210. $39.95 paperback. Reviewed by Wesley R. Bishop Was the recent Marvel and Netflix show Iron Fist racist? How do we define cultural appropriation and orientalism in cultural studies, especially when cultural productions deal with popular representations of other cultures? What does…
In 1999, ESPN’s SportCentury ranked the top North American athletes of the twentieth century. The list, compiled by a panel of 48 journalists, observers, and administrators–and one sport scholar–included eighty-nine men, eight women, and three horses. ESPN’s more recent compilation, The Undefeated’s 50 Greatest Black Athletes, asked the public to rank the most important black…
Whitaker, Sigur E. The Indy Car Wars: The 30-year Fight for Control of American Open-Wheel Racing. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015. Pp. 223. Notes, References, Index. $35.00 softcover. Reviewed by Rich Loosbrock Greed and power play a key role in professional sports, but how often have they destroyed a league? While destroyed may be too strong…
By Tom Fabian North Korea is arguably the most reclusive and enigmatic nation in the world. Due to a historically strained relationship with the United States and the advent of Westernization, the “Hermit Kingdom” has cloistered itself off from the rest of the world as one of the last truly communist states. With escalating rhetoric…
Cait Murphy. A History of American Sports in 100 Objects. New York: Basic Books, 2016. $29.99, hardback. Reviewed by Josh Howard Just a couple of short semesters ago, I found myself teaching the second half of a World History survey at Columbia State Community College in Franklin, TN. I admittedly felt a bit overwhelmed and underprepared even…
