Kimball, Richard Ian. Legends Never Die: Athletes and Their Afterlives in Modern America. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2017. Pp. 211. Notes, bibliography, and index. $55.00 hardcover. $19.95 paperback and ebook. Reviewed by Cat Ariail In Legends Never Die, Richard Ian Kimball concisely and critically considers the invention of the afterlives of American athletic heroes.…
By Doug Wilson This post originally appeared on Doug Wilson’s Baseball Bookshelf. It was one of the most intriguing matchups in baseball history. Ernie Banks and Leo Durocher–thrown together in the same clubhouse. Rarely have two more disparate characters been coupled outside of a lousy television sitcom. Smiling Ernie Banks, the perpetually glass-is-half-full line drive…
By Cat Ariail In early 1949, Catherine Meyer, still coach of the United States women’s track and field team despite the criticisms of her performance at the 1948 London Olympics, began to look toward the 1951 Pan American Games, slated for Buenos Aires, Argentina, and 1952 Olympics, which were to be held in Helsinki, Finland. …
By Cat Ariail The NBA season began with the dominance of the Golden State Warriors considered fait accompli. As the playoffs begin this Saturday, the Warriors seem poised to take the title they lost last year, with FiveThirtyEight giving them 59% title odds. Yet, in the interim, we witnessed an NBA season that featured an…
By Cat Ariail “Track and field, along with tennis, golf and swimming, are considered the ‘lady-like’ sports that women actively participate in. The reason for labeling these sports as ‘lady-like’ is that there is no body contact – and certainly there is none in track and field. It is an accepted fact that track and…
Socolow, Michael J. Six Minutes in Berlin: Broadcast Spectacle and Rowing Gold at the Nazi Olympics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Pp. 288. Notes and index. $95.00 clothback, $24.95 paperback, $22.46 ebook. Reviewed by Cat Ariail Michael J. Socolow seems to epitomize the unlucky, under-appreciated academic. As he wrote at Insider Higher Ed,…
By Cat Ariail “Indoor track, sport’s answer to the three-ring circus, springs full-grown from the winter much as Athena sprang fully-armed from the head of Zeus,” asserted Sports Illustrated’s Tex Maule in 1958.[1] In a subsequent article, Maule suggested the sport “takes on a carnival air when the lineal descendants of the fleet cave man…
Jacobus, Robert D. Houston Cougars in the 1960s: Death Threats, the Veer Offense, and the Game of the Century. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2015. Pp. xxiv+366. Bibliography and index. $29.99 clothback. Reviewed by Alex Parrish The 2006 Disney biopic Glory Road narrates the unprecedented championship run of the 1965-1966 Texas Western Miners basketball team,…
Foglio, Massimo with Ford, Mark. Touchdown in Europe: How American Football Came to the Old Continent. Published by the author (Foglio). 269 pages. Bibliography. $15.00 paperback. Reviewed by Russ Crawford Massimo Foglio, who is, according to his brief bio on the back of Touchdown in Europe: How American Football Came to the Old Continent, an…
Stark, Douglas. Wartime Basketball: The Emergence of a National Sport during World War II. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. 384. Notes, appendices, and index. $34.95 hardback. Reviewed by Cat Ariail As the Golden State Warriors marched toward 73 wins last season, basketball fans debated whether the Dubs were the greatest basketball team…
Sport in American History 