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,…
Cooky, Cheryl and Michael Messner. No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Pp. 314. Notes, index, and 19 tables. $42.95 paperback, EPUB, and PDF. $39.95 Kindle. Reviewed by Cat Ariail Are we finally approaching a much anticipated watershed in women’s sport? This summer, the…
By Timothy J. Lombardo A familiar refrain accompanied the Philadelphia Eagles’ unlikely trek toward Super Bowl LII. It was perhaps best explained by Ed Rendell. Predicting an Eagles victory, Rendell said, “This team reminds me of the 1993 Phillies, just a bunch of working stiffs, not glamourous whatsoever. So blue-collar.” Rendell was uniquely qualified to…
Moore, Louis. I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915. Sport and Society Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp240. Notes, index, images. $27.95 (paper). Reviewed by Andrew R.M. Smith My favorite story about Sam Langford involves a large wager and a good size mule. Some white men bet…
Miracle, Jared. Now with Kung Fu Grip!: How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts for America: Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2016. 188 pp. $29.95 Paperback. Reviewed by Richard Ravalli As its attention-grabbing title implies, Jared Miracle’s Now with Kung Fu Grip!: How Bodybuilders, Soldiers and a Hairdresser Reinvented Martial Arts…
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…
Fair, John D. Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. xiii+457. Notes, index, bibliography, and appendices. $35.00 clothback. Reviewed by Hunter M. Hampton I just defended my dissertation, and I am still a little mentally frazzled. This also means that my analytical reading is cranked up…
Cohen, Diana Tracy. Iron Dads: Managing Family, Work, and Endurance Sport Identities. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv+191. Introduction, notes, bibliography, and index. Paperback: $26.95. Reviewed by Ari de Wilde In her book, Iron Dads: Managing Family, Work, and Endurance Sport Identities, Diana Tracy Cohen, an Associate Professor of Political Science at…
By Kyle Kusz For the past year, I’ve been reading, collecting articles, taking notes, and generally doing what academics do trying to carefully make sense of the specific cultural ideas, logics, and performances that orient the wave of white supremacy that Donald Trump has stoked and ridden since he surprisingly emerged from the Republican primaries…
By Andrew McGregor During the fall of 1953 Bud Wilkinson, head coach of the University of Oklahoma, launched his own coach’s show. The fifteen-minute program initially aired live on Tuesday nights at 10:15 p.m. on Oklahoma City’s WKY-TV. Plainly titled “Bud Wilkinson’s Football,” newspapers simply described it as “OU’s famous coach discusses football.”[1] The show…
Sport in American History 