Kryk, John. Stagg vs. Yost: The Birth of Cutthroat Football. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Pp. 360. 32 b/w photographs, acknowledgements, selected bibliography, index. $33.82 hardcover. Reviewed by Michael T. Wood As the title suggests, veteran journalist and Michigan football historian John Kryk’s second book, Stagg vs. Yost: The Birth of Cutthroat Football, examines…
Interested in cultural meaning and the processes that solidify certain versions of history at the expense of others, Rita Liberti and Maureen M. Smith provide a delightfully engaging analysis of what can often be a frustrating cycle of collective memory in their monograph (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph. They actively reconsider what a biography is and provide an excellent study upon which we can ponder the processes of historical analysis.
By Jon Hart, Guest Contributor In its first season, the well-known Serial podcast tackled the tragic loss of a promising, charismatic, high school senior. The Season, another excellent podcast produced by WNYC, investigates a far less grim and tragic subject: The Columbia University football team, one of the oldest collegiate programs in the country. While the Columbia…
Finnegan, William. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. New York: Penguin, 2015. Pp. 447. Black and white photos. $27.95 hardback. Reviewed by Tolga Ozyurtcu Surfers are a fickle lot: millions of people singularly obsessed with something that has been around for thousands of years, who do not really agree about anything. Surfing is: a sport, not…
Davis, David. Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. 34 Photographs, Notes, Bibliography, and Index. Pp. 256. $26.95 hardback. Reviewed by Lindsay Parks Pieper Along the Waikiki beachfront in Honolulu stands a statue of local hero Duke Kahanamoku. The bare-chested, swim-trunk clad, bronze figure is positioned in front…
By Edward J. Gray, Guest Contributor On January 16th, 2010, Alabama head football coach Nick Saban made a promise to the Crimson Tide faithful. Coming off the heels of the Tide’s first national championship in nearly twenty years, a 37-21 win over the University of Texas Longhorns, Saban proclaimed that “this is not the end,…
By Nick Sacco In his 2014 publication on the history of the National Football League, historian Richard C. Crepeau declares that the game of football has become “America’s New National Pastime.” It’s easy to see why. Football has always been a popular sport in America, but the “New NFL” era—which began in the early 1990s…
Thomas, Damion L. Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 232 pp. $60.00 cloth. Reviewed by Andrew D. Linden In Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics, Damion L. Thomas analyzes the US government’s use of African American athletes as tools in the ideological battle between American…
Lamb, Chris, ed. From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. 648 pp. $35.00 paperback. Reviewed by Kate Aguilar On January 7, 2016, ESPN radio host Dan Le Batard interviewed hip hop artist, author, and public speaker Chuck D, former leader of the rap group…
By Cathryn Lucas As I discussed in my previous post, I’ve been thinking a lot about passing for my dissertation. Passing is an integral part of sport – whether it be in form of sending a ball from one teammate to another or a form of embodied cultural meaning making. While an interesting and important…
Sport in American History 