Abramsky, Sasha. Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar. Akashic Books, 2020. Pp. 280. Acknowledgments, end notes, introduction, photographs, $25.95 hardback. Reviewed by Bob D’Angelo. Sasha Abramsky is not a sports historian. He is a journalist who has spent the past 25 years writing about politics, covering social…
Luther, Jessica and Kavitha A. Davidson. Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. Pp. 328. Notes & Index. $26.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Noah Cohan This being 2020, an annus horribilis if there ever was one, Earthlings—and especially Americans—have a lot to reconsider. Since…
Stell, Marion and Reid, Heather. Women In Boots: Football and Feminism in the 1970s. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2020. xvii+167. 12 unnumbered pages of plates: illustrations, portraits. Acknowledgements, sources, notes, index. $24.95 paperback. $11.99 eBook. Reviewed by Russ Crawford In Women in Boots: Football and Feminism in the 1970s, Marion Stell and Heather Reid…
Steven Elliott Tripp, Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Pp. xxii + 401. Photos, notes, select bibliography, and index. $29 paperback. Reviewed by Christopher R. Davis In the long and storied history of baseball, few individuals loom as large as Tyrus Raymond Cobb. Popular since his early playing days,…
Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared at The Activist History Review and is cross-posted here with permission. By Michael T. Barry, Jr. Ever since I can remember, baseball has been a staple of my summers. As a kid, I would spend every single day playing backyard games with my friends and then nights watching my beloved Boston…
Elsey, Brenda and Nadel, Joshua. Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pp. 271. Notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 paperback. Reviewed by Russ Crawford Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel have added an important volume to women’s sport history with Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin…
Peterson, Todd, ed. The Negro Leagues were Major Leagues: Historians Reappraise Black Baseball. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing Company, 2020. Reviewed by Leslie Heaphy Todd Peterson has brought together an impressive array of authors to try to answer a long-debated question regarding the Negro Leagues. Historians, researchers, and the general fans have differing views of the…
Price, Asher. Earl Campbell: Yards After Contact. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. Pp. 344. 12 photos, notes, and index. $27.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Nicholas Evan Sarantakes It is difficult to explain how much Earl Campbell dominated American football in the late 1970s. For roughly three years, he was the player in the sport. In…
By Andrew McGregor Two news stories Monday laid bare the rotten core of American higher education and its unsavory alliance with big-time sports. They speak volumes about the core values of colleges and universities – exploitation – and the anxieties buried deep within administrators who desperately want to continue the status quo, even when it…
Beer, Jeremy. Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. Reviewed by Leslie Heaphy Author Jeremy Beer has written the first full biography of one of the greatest baseball players in history, Oscar Charleston. The story is long overdue, and Beer meets expectations, bringing to life…
Shapley, Haley. Strong Like Her: A Celebration of Rule Breakers, History Makers, and Unstoppable Athletes. New York: Gallery Books. Pp. 272. $29.99 Hardcover. Reviewed by Richard Ravalli A scan of social media pages devoted to bodybuilding publications and events will reveal images of heavily built women with accompanying comments that they are “gross,” and that…
By Andrew McGregor “Athletics, as it is conducted in many colleges today, is not even good for the handful,” University of Chicago President Robert M. Hutchins wrote in 1938. He worried about the overemphasis on sports in higher education and what the pressure for athletic profits meant for the welfare of students. “It has been…
Whitney-Wei, Jordan. Katharine Whitney Curtis: Mother of Synchronized Swimming. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2020. Pp. 185. Notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95 paperback. Reviewed by Vicki Valosik In 1912, Katharine Curtis (nee Whitney) became the first woman to swim across Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin. Under the headline “Madison has a youthful Annette Kellerman,” a…
