King-White, Ryan, ed. Sport and the Neoliberal University: Profit, Politics, and Pedagogy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Pp. 242. Notes, index, and 3 figures. $37.95 paperback, EPUB, and PDF. $34.95 Kindle. Reviewed by Jorge Iber Given California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signing the Fair Pay to Play Act into law, a review of…
Gitlin, Martin. Powerful Moments in Sports: The Most Significant Events in American History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Pp. 293. $38.00 hardback. $36.00 eBook. Reviewed by Jorge Iber Martin Gitlin’s work presents a series of short essays that cover some of the most significant sporting events in American history. As with all works of…
McLeod, Yanela G. The Miami Times and The Fight for Equality: Race, Sport, and the Black Press, 1948-1958. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019. Pp. 198. $90.00 hardcover. $85.00 eBook. Reviewed by Jorge Iber The 2018 movie Green Book was a surprise hit that generated an impressive financial return on its cost of roughly $23 million,…
Coffino, Michael J. The Other Classroom: The Essential Importance of High School Athletics. Pp. 199. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018. $28.00 Softcover. Reviewed by Jorge Iber As someone who has spent 30+ years working in the educational field (five years as a high school teacher, the rest at colleges and universities), the notion of…
Alou, Felipe, and Peter Kerasotis. Alou: My Baseball Journey. Forward by Pedro Martinez. Pp 336, 35 photographs, 1 illustration, and 1 index. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. $29.95 hardcover. A few years ago, a popular brand of beer (associated with one of the Major League clubs) ran a commercial that demonstrated the dramatic demographic…
Babicz, Martin C. and Thomas W. Zeiler, National Pastime: U.S. History through Baseball (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2017). Reviewed by Jorge Iber Martin Babicz and Thomas Zeiler’s National Pastime: U.S. History through Baseball seeks to present readers with a single tome that uses the sport as a mechanism with which to examine and clarify…
By Jorge Iber Early in 2017, Gabe Salgado of NBC News posted an article entitled “The Top Ten Latino Sports Moments of 2016.” Among the significant instances noted were some truly remarkable athletes in sports not “normally” associated with Latinos/as by the public. For example, Salgado noted the arrival of Auston Matthews (whose mother is…
Reeths, Paul. The United States Football League, 1982-1986. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2017. Pp. 428, photographs, bibliography, and index. $39.95. Reviewed by Jorge Iber At the start of The United States Football League, 1982-1986, author Paul Reeths harkens back to his youth in the early 1980s and recounts his excitement at the…
Conine, Chad S. The Republic of Football: Legends of the Texas High School Game. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Pp. 288. Index, and 20 Photos. $24.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Jorge Iber Before proceeding with this brief essay, it is necessary for this reviewer to own up that he is not a native-born Texan; though,…
Pearson, Greg. Maybe Next Year: Long Suffering Fans and the Teams That Never Deliver. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016. Pp. 264. 66 Photos. Index, $35.00 paperback. Reviewed by Jorge Iber As a long suffering fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Miami Dolphins (an odd combination, to be sure), this reviewer met the…
Sport in American History 