Podcasts by New Books in Sports
Interviews with Scholars of Sport about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Sport
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Alan McDougall, “The People’s Game: Football, State and Society in East Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The People’s Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Alan McDougall looks at football from the top-down and bottom-up: as a tool of the state, as forming regional i...
ListenJulie Des Jardins, “Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man” (Oxford University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In anticipation of Super Bowl 50, Sports Illustrated and WIRED magazines teamed up to speculate about the state of football fifty years from now, at the time of Super Bowl 100. Of course, the big q...
ListenCharles Fountain, “The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gambling and sports have been in the news lately in the US. Authorities in Nevada and New York have shut down the fantasy sports operatorsDraftKings and FanDuel in their states, judging that their ...
ListenDavid Zang, “I Wore Babe Ruth’s Hat: Field Notes from a Life in Sports” (University of Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How would you write your sports memoir? Maybe you’d recall a memorable trip to the stadium when you were young, or even getting an autograph from one of your favorite players. Was there a notable v...
ListenAnnie Blazer, “Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry (NYU Press, 2015), Annie Blazer shows through archival research and participant-observation ho...
ListenDavid Snowdon, “Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World” (Peter Lang, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of African American slang and pop culture references. ...
ListenDavid George Surdham, “The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989” (U of Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David George Surdham is the author of The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989 (University of Illinois Press, 2015). Surdham is Associate Professor of Economics at...
ListenEric Reed, “Selling the Yellow Jersey: The Tour de France in the Global Era” (University of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Tour de France is happening right now! The 2015 edition started on July 4th and will continue until July 26th. I’m excited to be able to share this interview with Eric Reed about his new book, ...
ListenJames A. Holstein, Richard S. Jones, George Koonce, Jr., “Is There Life After Football? Surviving the NFL” (New York UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The health of former NFL players has received plenty of attention in recent years. The suicides of Junior Seau and Dave Duerson, along with stories of retired players in only their 40s and 50s affe...
ListenJules Boykoff, “Activism and the Olympics: Dissent at the Games in Vancouver and London” (Rutgers University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A new chapter in the history of the Olympic Games appears to be opening. As one city after another has dropped out of the bidding for the 2022 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee has ...
ListenBruce Babington, “The Sports Film: Games People Play” (Wallflower Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most enduring film genres is the sports movie. From the earliest attempts at narrative motion pictures to the present day, movies devoted to athletic competition are both popular and las...
ListenEric Allen Hall, “Arthur Ashe: Tennis and Justice in the Civil Rights Era” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When he died from AIDS in 1993, Arthur Ashe was universally hailed as a man of principle, grace, and wisdom–a world-class athlete who had transcended his game. But a closer look at Ashe’s life reve...
ListenMatthew Algeo, “Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport” (Chicago Review Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Once upon a time, before baseball drew crowds to America’s ballparks and English workers spent their Saturdays at the football grounds, one of the most popular spectator events in both countries wa...
ListenStefan Rinke and Kay Schiller (editors), “The FIFA World Cup 1930-2010: Politics, Commerce, Spectacle and Identities” (Wallstein, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The history of globalization is found in more than international political organizations and multinational corporations, free-trade agreements and foreign direct investments, satellite communicatio...
ListenJ.C. Herz, “Learning to Breath Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness” (Crown Archetype, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In industrial parks, converted warehouses, and pole barns across the country, a fitness revolution is taking place. It’s a revolution, according to J.C. Herz, that’s leading us not so much forward ...
ListenRoger Kittleson, “The Country of Football: Soccer and the Making of Modern Brazil” (University of California Press, 2014) and Joshua Nadel, “Fútbol! Why Soccer Matters in Latin America” (University Press of Florida, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Passion. Flair. Instinct. Improvisation. As the World Cup advances to the knockout stage, you’ll hear these terms associated with the football styles of Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico rather than th...
ListenTravis Vogan, “Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media” (University of Illinois Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Last weekend was the NFL Draft, the annual event when teams select college players who have shown the talent to advance to the professional ranks. Staged at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, broadc...
ListenLucia Trimbur, “Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason’s Gym” (Princeton University Press, 2013)) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Imagine a boxing gym. What probably comes to mind is a large, run-down room on the upper floor of an old brick building, somewhere in a trash-strewn, depressed neighborhood. The room echoes with th...
ListenLincoln Harvey, “A Brief Theology of Sport” (SCM Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Does God care who wins the game? According to a recent survey, plenty of American fans think so. The Public Religion Research Institute found that a quarter of fans said that they had prayed to God...
ListenBrett Hutchins and David Rowe, “Sport Beyond Television: The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of Networked Media Sport” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Twenty years ago, when I was studying abroad in Europe, the only way to keep track of my teams back in the US was to sneak looks in The International Herald Tribune at the newspaper kiosk (the pric...
ListenN. Jeremi Duru, “Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL” (Oxford University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Each year, following the end of the NFL season, there is a blizzard of activity as teams with disappointing records fire their head coaches and look for the new leader who will turn things around. ...
ListenJules Boykoff, “Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 22nd Winter Olympics are underway. It’s safe to say that the lead-up has not gone smoothly. Of course, there have been the obligatory cost overruns, crony contracts, displacement of locals, and...
ListenSam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski, “Baseball Prospectus 2014” (Wiley, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This week’s episode features Sam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski, editors of the Baseball Prospectus’ 2014 (Wiley, 2014), a yearbook that both previews the upcoming baseball season and provides read...
ListenJohn Matthew Smith, “The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball” (University of Illinois Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the great dynasties of American sports are the UCLA men’s basketball teams of the 1960s-70s. In a twelve-year span, the Bruins won ten national collegiate championships. They had four unde...
ListenSusan Ware, “Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports” (UNC Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re younger than 45 or so, you probably don’t remember the “Battle of the Sexes.” This tennis match, between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, is one of the iconic moments in American history...
ListenThe 2013 Year-End Episode from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s that time of year when the panels of experts on sports call-in shows shout opinions on the best and worst of the past twelve months. To finish the year, New Books in Sports offers its own pane...
ListenKevin Kerrane, “Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting” (CreateSpace, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kevin Kerrane‘s Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting (CreateSpace, 2013) represents the first major study of the history and practice of professional baseball scouting. Based ...
ListenPeter Westwick and Peter Neushul, “The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing” (Crown, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Atlantic magazine recently asked its readers to name the greatest athlete of all time. The usual suspects were present among the nominees: Jesse Owens, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, Don Bradman. Given t...
ListenLindsay Krasnoff, “The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010” (Lexington Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1967, an official of the French basketball federation lamented the team’s poor finish at that year’s European Championships in Finland. The French team finished sixth in their group of eight, an...
ListenThe NBS Fall Seminar: Sports Memoirs from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most crowded sections of the sports library is the one devoted to autobiographies and memoirs. The shelves here are constantly adding new titles, by both legends and bit players. For ins...
ListenDavid Little, “The Sports Show: Athletics as Image and Spectacle” (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many fans store a vast collection of sports images in their brains. With just a moment’s glance at a picture, even a slice of the picture, they can recognize the athletes, the season, the game, the...
ListenPeter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann (editors), “Africa’s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space” (University of Michigan Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2010, for the first time, an African nation hosted the FIFA World Cup. The advertisements surrounding the tournament used graphics and sounds intended to conjure the image of a vibrant, exotic l...
ListenTony Collins, “Sport in Capitalist Society: A Short History” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Throughout the centuries, in cultures around the world, people have played games. But it has only been in the modern age, in the last 250 years or so, that people have competed in and watched sport...
ListenChris Anderson and David Sally, “The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong” (Penguin, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Two guys are watching Premier League highlights, when onto the TV screen comes Rory Delap, then with Stoke City, doing one of his renowned throw-ins from the touchline directly into the box. One gu...
ListenEric Simons, “The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession” (The Overlook Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In October 2007, journalist Eric Simons sat in the stands of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, Calif., to watch his beloved University of California Bears take on Oregon State University in football. I...
ListenPeter Hansen, “The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment” (Harvard University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Scholars have pointed to various historical ingredients they see as necessary for the development of modern sport: political changes that allowed people to form associations, the rise of competitiv...
ListenSamir Chopra, “Brave New Pitch: The Evolution of Modern Cricket” (HarperCollins, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The sixth season of the Indian Premier League recently concluded, and once again off-field problems cast light on the league’s growing pains. For the fifth year in a row, no Pakistani players were ...
ListenThe NBS Summer Seminar: Sports Books for Children from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What did you read as a young sports fan? Maybe the sports pages in the local newspaper, or a glossy illustrated magazine? Did your school’s library carry biographies of famous athletes written for ...
ListenRon Kaplan, “501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
WorldCat is the largest online catalog in the world, accessing the collections of more than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories. Using the catalog, a subject search of particular spor...
ListenMartin Kelner, “Sit Down and Cheer: A History of Sport on TV” (Bloomsbury, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I have never been to the Super Bowl, and I will probably never will. I’ve never been to a World Cup match or an Olympic event. I’ve never been to the Final Four or the Rose Bowl. I’ve never been to...
ListenSimon Martin, “Sport Italia: The Italian Love Affair with Sport” (I.B. Tauris, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Azzurri, cyclists, boxers, Berlusconi, Balotelli, strapping Fascist men preparing to bear arms, strapping Fascist women preparing to bear children, the shirtless Duce, Ferraris, Vespas, doping scan...
ListenAndrew Zimbalist, “In the Best Interests of Baseball: Governing the National Pastime” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2008, when entertainment magnate Lalit Modi launched the Indian Premier League, he took a title that was new to the world of cricket: Commissioner. Modi’s idea for the structure of the IPL had A...
ListenDennis Deninger, “Sports on Television: The How and Why Behind What You See” (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Did you watch the game last night? No matter if you live in Australia, England, India, Ontario, or the US, chances are you’ve heard that question today. Televised sports are a constant presence in ...
ListenSteven Riess, “The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime: Horse Racing, Politics, and Organized Crime in New York, 1865-1913” (Syracuse University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the classic 1973 film The Sting, Robert Redford and Paul Newman lead a team of con men in an elaborate scam to take revenge on a dangerous crime boss and a corrupt cop. The final play takes plac...
ListenDavid George Surdam, “The Rise of the National Basketball Association” (University of Illinois Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This past October, David Stern announced that he would step down as commissioner of the National Basketball Association in February 2014. In Stern’s three decades at the helm, the NBA has seen its ...
ListenThe 2012 Year-End Book List Episode from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The sports pages, websites, and television channels are running their annual reviews of the year in sports. The 10 Best Photos! The 10 Biggest Plays! The Top 10 Athletes! Whatever your sporting ...
ListenDave Gluck, “Rhythms of the Game: The Link Between Musical and Athletic Performance” (Hal Leonard, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Around 380 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in the Republic about the idealized society as having a “united influence of music and sport” where its people “mingle music with sport in the fair...
ListenBrett Bebber, “Violence and Racism in Football: Politics and Cultural Conflict in British Society, 1968-1998” (Pickering & Chatto, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This past September an independent panel commissioned in 2009 by the British government released its 395-page report on the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of April 1989. The published findings and t...
ListenDeclan Hill, “The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime” (McClelland & Stewart, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are talking to Declan Hill about his new book The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime (McClelland & Stewart, 2010). Most of my research focuses on corruption and the link with organized crime....
ListenAndrei Markovits and Emily Albertson, “Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States” (Temple University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
My wife is a sports fan. Together, we have cheered from the stands at college football games and track meets, for local minor-league baseball clubs and hockey teams. We’ve spent Sunday afternoons w...
ListenDonald Spivey, “‘If You Were Only White’: The Life of Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige” (University of Missouri Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Of all American sports, baseball has contributed the greater number of folk heroes to the larger culture. Fictional characters of awe-inspiring ability, like the mighty Casey and Roy Hobbs, or quir...
ListenChris Cooper, “Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport” (Oxford University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This past August, the saga of Lance Armstrong came to its inglorious end. The seven-time champion of the Tour de France and Olympic medalist ended his defense against charges that he had engaged in...
ListenTheresa Runstedtler, “Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the history of American sports, few athletes were as famous and hated in their day as Jack Johnson. The first African American boxing champion, Johnson was an astonishingly brash figure who flou...
ListenGuy Fraser-Sampson, “Cricket at the Crossroads: Class, Colour and Controversy from 1967 to 1977” (Elliott & Thompson, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the 1960s attendance fell at cricket grounds across England. Just as the Church of England lost members in droves in the same period, it appeared that this other pillar of English tradition ...
ListenLaurent Dubois, “Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are few moments in recent sports history as riveting, perplexing, and widely debated as Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt to Marco Materazzi in the final match of the 2006 World Cup. Think of your ...
ListenGreg de Moore, “Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport” (Allen and Unwin, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A number of modern sports are credited to a particular 19th-century founder. The inventive work of some of these figures, like basketball’s James Naismith, American football’s Walter Camp, and judo...
ListenLisa Bier, “Fighting the Current: The Rise of American Women’s Swimming, 1870-1926” (McFarland, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
American women dominated the swimming competition at the London Olympics, earning a total of sixteen medals in seventeen events. This template of success was set already at the 1920 Games, the firs...
ListenKate Buford, “Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe” (Bison Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you watched the U.S. broadcast of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, you may have heard Matt Lauer and Bob Costas mention Jim Thorpe during Sweden’s entrance. Thorpe, arguably the b...
ListenThe NBS Summer Seminar: Understanding the Olympic Games from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 2012 London Olympics are here. To mark the event, New Books in Sports offers another of its occasional seminar episodes. And as with any great seminar, you’ll be eager to tell people what you...
ListenDavid Davis, “Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
26.2 is one of the most recognizable numbers in sports. It is also a curious number. The length of the marathon race is the only distance in track that is still measured in English units. Yards hav...
ListenBrian Ingrassia, “The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football” (University Press of Kansas, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During this week of the 4th of July, it’s appropriate to mark America’s national holiday with a podcast about that most American of sports: college football. As past guests on the podcast have expl...
ListenKevin Young, “Sport, Violence and Society” (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The one play of my football career that my father remembers most fondly came in my very first game, when I was eleven years old. Younger and smaller than the other players, I was positioned out of ...
ListenTimothy Grainey, “Beyond ‘Bend It Like Beckham’: The Global Phenomenon of Women’s Soccer” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Two days before this year’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the top two women’s clubs in Europe played on the same pitch, at Munich’s Olympic Stadium, in the final match o...
ListenDavid J. Leonard, “After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness” (SUNY Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The NBA Finals are under way, with the Oklahoma City Thunder facing the Miami Heat. Network executives and the sports punditocracy are elated with the match-up. Ratings for Game 1 of the series wer...
ListenJohn Fox, “The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game” (HarperCollins, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are a lot of balls in my house. Baseballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, footballs, basketballs, volleyballs. We have Wiffle balls, Nerf balls, and Super Balls. My children and I occasionally u...
ListenThe NBS Spring Seminar: Understanding European Football from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s springtime in the American Midwest. The playoffs for the NBA title and hockey’s Stanley Cup are moving into the later rounds, and the new baseball season has already produced history-making pe...
ListenRobert Lipsyte, “An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir” (Ecco, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the summer of 1957, Robert Lipsyte answered a classified ad. He was an English major who needed some cash, and The New York Times was looking for an editorial assistant. He went to work on the n...
ListenPaul Dickson, “Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick” (Walker & Company, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mention the name Bill Veeck to a baseball fan and what will likely come to mind is the back-and-white image of three-foot, seven-inch Eddie Gaedel at the plate of a Major League game, swimming in h...
ListenRobert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are three Americans in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One is Horace Wilson, the professor of English who brought his students outside for a game in 1872, thus introducing baseball to Jap...
ListenRandy Roberts, “A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nation” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Two weeks from now the National Football League will hold its annual draft of college football players. For the league’s teams, the draft is the chance to re-stock their rosters with fresh young ta...
ListenNicholas Evan Sarantakes, “Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War” (Cambridge UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a young, patriotic American, I was torn by the boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. On the one hand, I knew already as an eleven-year-old, long before Ronald Reagan had uttered the phr...
ListenPaul Watson, “Up Pohnpei: A Quest to Reclaim the Soul of Football by Leading the World’s Ultimate Underdogs to Glory” (Profile Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Coming to terms with the limitations of our own sporting achievement is one of the hardest things many of us have to do in life. A couple of years ago, after one too many serious injuries, I realis...
ListenRichard Wilson, “Inside the Divide: One City, Two Teams, the Old Firm” (Canongate, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alabama-Auburn. Maple Leafs-Canadiens. Boca Juniors-River Plate. Carlton-Collingwood.Fenerbahce-Galatasaray. Great rivalries are the catalysts of national sporting cultures. They are the high point...
ListenGideon Haigh, “Sphere of Influence: Writings on Cricket and Its Discontents” (Victory Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During his tenure as a university lecturer, the novelist (and former football goalkeeper) Vladimir Nabokov instructed his students that the reader of literature needed three things: imagination, me...
ListenMary Louise Adams, “Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport” (University of Toronto Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On the Minnesota rinks where I spent many days of my childhood, the skates made the man–or the boy, to be more accurate. Hockey skates had a boot of tough leather and a reinforced toe to protect ag...
ListenJohn Bloom, “There You Have It: The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard Cosell” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Howard Cosell was fond of saying that American television in the 1970s was dominated by three C’s, representing each of the broadcast networks: revered CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, NBC’s late-n...
ListenPeter Millward, “The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s the English Premier League’s birthday! On this day twenty years ago, all twenty-two clubs of the First Division resigned from the 104-year-old Football League and declared their plans to creat...
ListenStephen Mumford, “Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Here is a quiz. What is your idea of the perfect sports-watching experience: a) watching your team crush its rival in a one-sided, humiliating contest, or b) watching two top-quality opponents, nei...
ListenRoy MacGregor, “Wayne Gretzky’s Ghost: And Other Tales from a Lifetime in Hockey” (Random House Canada, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For years, the morning skate was a Christmas Day ritual for my father and me.After the presents had been unwrapped and before the morning service, my dad and I walked to the nearby city park and to...
ListenAndrew Ritchie, “Quest for Speed: A History of Early Bicycle Racing 1868-1903” (Cycle Publishing, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As several guests on this podcast have told us, sports have been fundamentally connected with the major developments of modern history: urbanization, class conflict, imperialism, political repressi...
ListenAdrian Burgos, Jr., “Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball” (Hill and Wang, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The integration of baseball is most often cast in terms of black and white, but biographer Adrian Burgos, Jr.— a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign– is out to change that. In...
ListenDennis Frost, “Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the celebrity firmament that circles around us, sports stars are among the brightest lights. Kobe, Tiger, Messi, Márta, Sachin, and Serena can be recognized from most points on the globe.But ot...
ListenRandy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“I’m sure if it wasn’t for Joe Louis,” acknowledged Jackie Robinson, “the color line in baseball would not have been broken for another ten years.” To Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis was an inspiration and...
ListenThe New Books in Sports 2011 Year-End Book List from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I am a fan of the end-of-the-year, double-size issues of magazines–full of photographs, lists of the best and worst of the year, notable quotes, and vignettes about the year’s events. This week’s p...
ListenAndrei Markovits, “Gaming the World: How Sports Are Shaping Global Politics and Culture” (Princeton UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“We live in the age of globalization, with the interconnection of markets, technology, and cultures making the world a smaller place.” Sure.Tell that to the guys on my local sports radio show. For ...
ListenRonald Reng, “A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke” (Yellow Jersey Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On November 10, 2009, Robert Enke stepped in front of an express train at a crossing in the German village of Eilvese. At age 32, Robert left behind a young family: he and his wife, Teresa, had jus...
ListenDavid Potter, “The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Victor’s Crown brings to vivid life the signal role of sport in the classical world. Ranging over a dozen centuries–from Archaic Greece through to the late Roman and early Byzantine empires–Dav...
ListenJorge Iber, “Latinos in U.S. Sport: A History of Isolation, Cultural Identity, and Acceptance” (Human Kinetics, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 107th World Series is underway, with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers vying for the championship of Major League Baseball. The Cardinals’ star, Albert Pujols, has already entered t...
ListenTeddy Jamieson, “Whose Side Are You On?: Sport, the Troubles, and Me” (Yellow Jersey Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Here’s a sport quiz for you. Name a world-class athlete who hailed from the state of Nebraska: an Olympic champion, a hall of famer, someone who was among the very best at his or her game. (And no ...
ListenJennifer Ring, “Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball” (University of Illinois Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s October. In the American sports calendar, that means it’s time for the baseball playoffs. My team, the Minnesota Twins, wasn’t even close this year, going from first place last year to the cel...
ListenDave Zirin, “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World” (Haymarket Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are beautiful sports photos, and dramatic sports photos. There are sports photos that are funny, and others that are poignant. There are photos that capture athletic brilliance, and tenacity,...
ListenKay Schiller and Christopher Young, “The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany” (University of California Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This past summer Germany hosted the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The 32 matches drew more than 800,000 fans, while the total number of foreign tourists visiting Germany increased by nine per cent o...
ListenScott Brooks, “Black Men Can’t Shoot” (University of Chicago Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the NBA in the midst of a labor disagreement, players from the world’s premier basketball league are scattering in different directions to maintain their skills (and get paid). This past summe...
ListenAllen Guttmann, “Sports and American Art from Benjamin West to Andy Warhol” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was a kid, I used to pore over an illustrated history of American sports that I had received as a birthday gift. The oversized, hardcover book featured some of the iconic images of 20th-cent...
ListenAndrew Morris, “Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan” (University of California Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
My Little League baseball career spanned the late Seventies and early Eighties. During those summers, I always set aside the afternoon in August when the championship game of the Little League Worl...
ListenSteve Bloomfield, “Africa United: How Football Explains Africa” (Canongate Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A couple of days ago I had an unusual experience. I was staying in a hotel in Kampala, with a stunning view of the southern reaches of the Ugandan capital and the northern edge of Lake Victoria. It...
ListenJohn Eric Goff, “Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sports” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The instructor of my freshman physics course fit the stereotype of a physics professor: unkempt white hair, black glasses case in the breast pocket of his short-sleeved shirt, thick German accent, ...
ListenEvander Lomke and Martin Rowe, “Right Off the Bat: Cricket, Baseball, Literature & Life” (Paul Dry Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Last spring’s Cricket World Cup was a major global event. Estimates of the television audience for the final matches ranged from 400 million to one billion, while the website ESPNcricinfo.com had a...
ListenTony Collins, “A Social History of English Rugby Union” (Routledge, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most modern sports have some creation myth that usually links them to an almost-sacred place of origin. Baseball has its Cooperstown. Golf its St. Andrews. Basketball its Springfield College. If yo...
ListenTodd Denault, “The Greatest Game: The Montreal Canadiens, the Red Army, and the Night that Saved Hockey” (McClelland & Stewart, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When sports fans list the greatest games, they talk about close contests, outstanding performances, and dramatic finishes. Think of game six of the 1975 World Series between the Red Sox and the Red...
ListenLee Congdon, “Baseball and Memory: Winning, Losing, and Remembrance of Things Past” (St. Augustine’s Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Isn’t it funny?” once mused Buck O’Neil, the sage of Negro League baseball. “Everybody remembers going to their first baseball game with their father. They might not remember going to their first ...
ListenDon Van Natta, Jr., “Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias” (Little, Brown, and Company, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
My older daughter is twelve years old. Like many girls her age, she has spent countless hours on the soccer field. She has played volleyball and run cross-country at her school. She was the catcher...
ListenMichael Oriard, ” Brand NFL: Making and Selling America’s Favorite Sport” (UNC Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is the summer of discontent for fans of the National Football League. What will they do if team owners and players cannot reach a labor agreement before the fall season? The satirists at The Oni...
ListenCharles Clotfelter, “Big-Time College Sports in American Universities” (Cambridge University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Corruption in big-time college sports recently claimed another victim: Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel. Once regarded as a paragon of integrity, Tressel is now seen as one more example of a c...
ListenGavin Mortimer, “The Great Swim” (Walker Books, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I have the habit of reacting audibly when reading good works of non-fiction. Members of my household and strangers on airplanes have been startled by my hmms and huhs of surprise, my ews and ughs o...
ListenChuck Korr, “More Than Just a Game–Soccer vs. Apartheid: The Greatest Soccer Story Ever Told” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Chances are, if you were one of the 700 million people who watched the 2010 World Cup, you likely heard mention of the soccer games that prisoners on Robben Island played during the decades of apar...
ListenKurt Kemper, “College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era” (University of Illinois Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When we think of sports and the Cold War, what typically comes to mind are steroid-fueled East German swimmers, or the Soviets’ controversial basketball win at the Munich games, or Mike Eruzione’s ...
ListenErik Jensen, “Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Here’s a simple–or should we say simplistic?–line of political reasoning: communities are made of people; people can either be sick or healthy; communities, therefore, are sick or healthy depending...
ListenAram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But no dunks! Russell’s opponents in college and the NBA...
ListenChas Smith, "Cocaine and Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing’s Greatest Love Affair" (Rare Bird, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Surfers are the ultimate bad boys, living the counter-culture life of decadence and hedonism as they travel the world in search of the perfect wave, partying hard along the way. So, it’s not surpri...
ListenGrégory Quin, "Des Réseaux et des Hommes: Participation et Contribution de la Suisse à l’Internationalisation du Sport (1912-1972)" (Éditions Alphil, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Grégory Quin, maître d’enseignement et de recherche à l’Institut des sciences du sport de l’Université de Lausanne, and he is the author and editor of Des Réseaux et des Homm...
ListenDavid Davis, "Wheels of Courage: How Paralyzed Veterans from World War II Invented Wheelchair Sports" (Center Street, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Out of the carnage of World War II comes an unforgettable tale about defying the odds and finding hope in the most harrowing of circumstances. Wheels of Courage: How Paralyzed Veterans from World W...
ListenJoel S. Franks, "Asian American Basketball: A Century of Sport, Community and Culture" (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Jeremy Lin shot (pardon the pun) to stardom with his unexpected scoring run with the New York Knickerbockers in 2012 many aficionados of basketball were surprised that an Asian American (Lin i...
ListenBarbara Keys, "The Ideal of Global Sport: From Peace to Human Rights" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Barbara Keys, Professor of US and International History at Durham University, and author and editor of The Ideal of Global Sport: From Peace to Human Rights (University of Pe...
ListenCorey Sobel, "The Red Shirt" (UP of Kentucky, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At first, Miles Furling plays football to fit in. By eighth grade he realizes that he is both gay and a football player. After an unsuccessful attempt at honesty, he hides who he is and puts all hi...
ListenRalph Carhart, "The Hall Ball" (McFarland, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rescued in 2010 from the small creek that runs next to Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, New York, a simple baseball launched an epic quest that spanned the United States and beyond. For eight years,...
ListenRon Snyder, "The Baltimore Stallions: The Brief, Brilliant History of the CFL Champion Franchise" (McFarland, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A few years ago, I came across an article entitled “‘Who Do I Root for Now?’: The Impact of Franchise Relocation on the Loyal Fans Left Behind: A Case Study of Hartford Whaler Fans,” by Craig G. Hy...
ListenJames Carter, "Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai" (Norton, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shanghai’s status as a bustling, international place both now and in the past hardly needs much introduction, although the centrality of horse racing to the earlier incarnation of the city’s cosmop...
ListenJ. Iber and M. Longoria, "Latinos in American Football: Pathbreakers on the Gridiron, 1927 to the Present" (McFarland, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Jorge Iber, Professor of History and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Science at Texas Tech, and Mario Longoria, a long-time author and educator who received his PhD...
ListenLou Hernandez, "Bobby Maduro and the Cuban Sugar Kings" (McFarland, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are two key elements of today’s professional baseball that are informed by Lou Hernandez’s wonderful book Bobby Maduro and the Cuban Sugar Kings (McFarland, 2019): the increased presence of L...
ListenSasha Abramsky, "Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar" (Akashic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Sasha Abramsky, author of Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar (Akashic Books, 2020). Lottie Dod is not a familiar name ...
ListenJosé Alamillo, "Deportes: The Making of a Sporting Mexican Diaspora" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Deportes: The Making of a Sporting Mexican Diaspora (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Professor José Alamillo, a specialist in Chicana/o Studies, Labor, and Sports history, examines the powerful...
ListenJeremy Bhandari, "Trust the Grind: How World-Class Athletes Got to the Top" (Mango Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sixteen athletes from eleven sports arenas. Each chapter tells a different story, as each superstar shares the habit that helped them accomplish their goals and reach the pinnacle of their professi...
ListenDanyel Reiche and Tamir Sorek, "Sport, Politics, and Society in the Middle East" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sports scholars Danyel Reiche and Tamir Sorek’s edited volume, Sport, Politics, and Society in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2019), makes a significant contribution to what remains a la...
ListenKathleen Bachynski, "No Game for Boys to Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Kathleen Bachynski, Assistant Professor of Public Health at Muhlenberg College, and author of No Game for Boys to Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Pub...
ListenJennifer Domino Rudolph, "Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity" (Ohio State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her incisive study Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity (Ohio State University Press, 2020), Jennifer Domino Rudolph analyzes major league...
ListenWade Davies, "Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball, 1895-1970" (UP of Kansas, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The game of basketball is perceived by most today as an “urban” game with a locale such as Rucker Park in Harlem as the game’s epicenter (as well as a pipeline to the NBA). While that is certainly ...
ListenBen Cohen, "The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks" (Custom House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For decades, statisticians, social scientists, psychologists, and economists (among them Nobel Prize winners) have spent massive amounts of precious time thinking about whether streaks actually exi...
ListenJohn Harney, "Empire of Infields: Baseball in Taiwan and Cultural Identity, 1895-1968" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by John Harney, Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Asian Studies Department at Centre College, and author of Empire of Infields: Baseball in Taiwan and Cultural Ide...
ListenAllan Downey, "The Creator’s Game: Lacrosse, Identity, and Indigenous Nationhood" (UBC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Allan Downey, Associate Professor of History and Indigenous Studies at McMaster University, and author of The Creator’s Game: Lacrosse, Identity, and Indigenous Nationhood (U...
ListenJonathan Gelber, "Tiger Woods’s Back and Tommy John’s Elbow" (Skyhorse, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Dr Jonathan Gelber, author of the book Tiger Woods’s Back and Tommy John’s Elbow: Injuries and Tragedies That Transformed Careers, Sports and Society (Skyhorse Publishing, 20...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenMitchell Nathanson, "Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Dr. Mitchell Nathanson, author of the book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Nathanson, a professor of law at the Jeffrey S. Moora...
ListenRebecca J. Kissane and Sarah Winslow, "Whose Game?: Gender and Power in Fantasy Sports" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Fantasy sports have the opportunity to provide a sporting community in which gendered physical presence plays no role—a space where men and women can compete and interact on a level playing field. ...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenDavid Block, "Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original and Now Completely Forgotten Game of English Baseball" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by David Block, author of Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original and Now Completely Forgotten Game of English Baseball (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Block is a baseball hist...
ListenYaron Weitzman, "Tanking to the Top" (Grand Central, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When a group of private equity bigwigs purchased the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the team was both bad and boring. Attendance was down. So were ratings. The Sixers had an aging coach, an antiquated...
ListenTim Rooney, "John Beilein at Michigan: A Basketball Revival" (McFarland, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When John Beilein arrived at University of Michigan in 2007, the once-proud men's basketball program was adrift after the fallout from a scandal and failing to reach the NCAA Tournament for nine st...
ListenGerald R. Gems, "Sport and the Shaping of Civic Identity in Chicago" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The city of Chicago is one of the US' most diverse cosmopolitan areas. Given the array of people who live in the city, it is reasonable to assume that the goals of the various communities differ in...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenTravis Bell et al., "CTE, Media, and the NFL: Framing a Public Health Crisis as a Football Epidemic" (Lexington, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Travis Bell, Janelle Applequist, and Christian Dotson-Pierson to discuss their new book CTE, Media, and the NFL: Framing a Public Health Crisis as a Football Epidemic (Lexing...
ListenMort Zachter, "Red Holzman: The Life and Legacy of a Hall of Fame Basketball Coach" (Sports Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many books have been written about Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusscherre and the other great players on the New York Knicks championship teams of the 1970s, though much less at...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenNicholas Blincoe, "More Noble Than War: A Soccer History of Israel-Palestine" (Bold Type Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nicholas Blincoe’s More Noble Than War: A Soccer History of Israel-Palestine (Bold Type Books, 2019) is a beautifully narrated and written history of a century of conflict between pre-state Jews an...
ListenRoger Gilles, "Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Roger Gilles, Director of the Honors College and Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University, and author of Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle ...
ListenBrad Balukjian, "The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Brad Balukjian, author of the book The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife (University of Nebraska, 2020). A combination of Charles Kuralt and Lawren...
ListenMatthew Goodman, "The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team" (Ballantine Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 1949-50 CCNY Beavers basketball team were one of the unlikeliest of champions in sports history. CCNY was a tuition-free in Harlem, New York, intended to give working class students the best ed...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenChristopher J. Phillips, "Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know About Baseball" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The so-called Sabermetrics revolution in baseball that began in the 1970s, popularized by the book—and later Hollywood film—Moneyball, was supposed to represent a triumph of observation over intuit...
ListenAndrew R. M. Smith, "No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing" (U Texas Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed Foreman’s ca...
ListenJohn N. Singer, "Race, Sports, and Education: Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for Black Male College Athletes" (Harvard Ed Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
College sport is a multi-billion dollar industry. The men and women who lead the teams in the most important conferences often make millions of dollars between their coaching salaries and endorseme...
ListenMaria Veri and Rita Liberti, "Gridiron Gourmet: Gender and Food at the Football Tailgate" (U Arkansas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Maria Veri, Associate Professor of Kinesiology at San Francisco State University, and Rita Liberti, Professor of Kinesiology at California State University, East Bay. Togethe...
ListenSeán Crosson, "Gaelic Games on Film" (Cork UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Seán Crosson, leader of the Sport and Exercise Research Group at NUI Galway, co-director of the MA in Sports Journalism and Communication, and Professor at the Huston School ...
ListenEvan Friss, "On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Evan Friss, an associate professor of history at James Madison University, historicizes the bicycle’s place in New York City’s social, economic, infrastructural and cultural politics. On Bicycles: ...
ListenGabe Logan, "The Early Years of Chicago Soccer, 1887-1939" (Lexington Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The thriving metropolis of Chicago was the land of opportunity for a wide variety of ethnic groups. As individuals from nations where soccer reigned began arriving in the area, they instituted team...
ListenAsher Price, "Earl Campbell: Yards After Contact" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Earl Campbell was a force in American football, winning a state championship in high school, rushing his way to a Heisman trophy for the University of Texas, and earning MVP as he took the Houston ...
ListenAlberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...
ListenPeter Kerasotis, "Alou: My Baseball Journey" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
All aficionados of baseball are familiar with the pathbreaking role of Jackie Robinson in reintegrating the game back in 1947. What many fans are less familiar with are the issues that Latinos of c...
ListenRebecca Scofield, "Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West" (U Washington, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rodeo is one of the indelible images of culture in the American West. The John Wayne-like cowboy tenaciously hanging on to the bucking bronc is a classic vision of what it means to be in the West. ...
ListenLincoln A. Mitchell, "San Francisco Year Zero" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
1978 was the year that changed San Francisco forever, writes Lincoln A. Mitchell in San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team (Rutgers University Press,...
ListenDerrick E. White, "Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Jake Gaither, Florida A&M, and the History of Black College Football" (UNC, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Derrick E. White's new book Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Jake Gaither, Florida A&M, and the History of Black College Football (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) chronicles the development o...
ListenTrevor Thompson, "Playing for Australia: The First Socceroos, Asia, and World Football" (Fair Play, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Trevor Thompson, a journalist who has reported on association football in Australia and around the world since the 1980s. He is also the author of Playing for Australia: The ...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenNoah Cohan, "We Average Unbeautiful Watchers: Fan Narratives and the Reading of American Sport" (U Nebraska, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Noah Cohan, Lecturer in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and the author of We Average Unbeautiful Watchers: Fan Narratives and the Reading of A...
ListenDavid A. F. Sweet, "Three Seconds in Munich: The Controversial 1972 Olympic Basketball Final" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One. Two. Three. That’s as long as it took to sear the souls of a dozen young American men, thanks to the craziest, most controversial finish in the history of the Olympics—the 1972 gold-medal bask...
ListenRob Ruck, "Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL" (The New Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Rob Ruck, Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL (The New Press, 2018...
ListenBernardo Ramirez Rios, "Transnational Sport in the American West: Oaxaca California Basketball" (Lexington Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The game of basketball is not necessarily associated with Mexicans or Mexican Americans. In Mexico, soccer (futbol) is the number one sport, followed by baseball. There is even professional (and...
ListenNancy Lough and Andrea N. Geurin, "Routledge Handbook of the Business of Women's Sport" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shortly after the conclusion of the Women's World Cup earlier this summer, a friend suggested to me that it signaled the long-awaited arrival of soccer as a mainstream sport in the U.S. I thought a...
ListenRoy Hay, "Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the 19th Century" (Cambridge Scholars, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Roy Hay, Honorary Fellow at Deakin University, and the author of Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the 19th Century: They Did Not Come From Nowhere (Cambridge Scho...
ListenVanessa Heggie, "Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Vanessa Heggie talks about the history of biomedical research in extreme environments. Heggie is a Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation at the University of Birmingham. She is the author o...
ListenSusan Brownell, "The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As my first guest, I’d would like to introduce Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri – St Louis, one of the authors of The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, ...
ListenKerry Eggers, "Jail Blazers: How the Portland Trail Blazers Became the Bad Boys of Basketball" (Sport Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, the Portland Trail Blazers were one of the hottest teams in the NBA. For almost a decade, they won 60 percent of their games while making it to the Western Confere...
ListenStephen Hardy and Andrew Holman, "Hockey: A Global History" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Stephen Hardy, retired professor of kinesiology and affiliate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, and Andrew Holman, professor of history at and the dire...
ListenBrenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel, "Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel’s new book, Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America (University of Texas Press, 2019), uncovers the hidden history of the arrival of physical educati...
ListenGregory H. Wolf, "Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison" (SABR, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Wrigley Field is one of a handful of sports stadiums to have transcended its athletic purpose to become a true American landmark. Nestled in its neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, the park ...
ListenChris Donnelly, "Doc, Donnie, The Kid and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought For New York’s Baseball Soul" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Chris Donnelly's new book Doc, Donnie, The Kid and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought For New York’s Baseball Soul (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) focuses on the 1985 New York b...
ListenBonita Mersiades, "Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way" (Powderhouse Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Bonita Mersiades, former Head of Public Affairs with the Football Federation Australia, and author of Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way (Powderhouse Press, ...
ListenGregg Bocketti, "The Invention of the Beautiful Game: Football and the Making of Modern Brazil" (UP of Florida, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Gregg Bocketti, Professor of History at Transylvania University, and author of The Invention of the Beautiful Game: Football and the Making of Modern Brazil(University Press ...
ListenAlexander Barnes, "Play Ball! Doughboys and Baseball during the Great War" (Schiffer Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Alexander Barnes, who co-wrote Play Ball! Doughboys and Baseball during the Great War (Schiffer Publishing, 2019) with Peter F. Belmonte and Samuel O. Barnes. Blending sports...
ListenLincoln A. Mitchell, "Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ask a Brooklynite over the age of fifty and they’ll likely tell you that baseball’s golden age ended the day the Dodgers and Giants packed up and headed for the West Coast. Not so argues Lincoln A....
ListenRoger Robinson, "When Running Made History" (Syracuse UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“A race can mean more than a race,” Roger Robinson writes in his new book, When Running Made History. “It can show that human beings are still capable of attaining pure beauty through arduous endea...
ListenRon Keurajian, "Baseball Hall of Fame Autographs: A Reference Guide" (McFarland, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Ron Keurajian, author of the book Baseball Hall of Fame Autographs: A Reference Guide (Second Edition)(McFarland, 2018). Keurajian is a commercial banker by trade but has spe...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenKeith Gave, "The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage" (Gold Star Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Keith Gave spent six years in the NSA during the Cold War, but his most daring mission may have come later, while working as a sports writer. In the late 1980s, Gave was asked by the Detroit Red Wi...
ListenCésar Brioso, "Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by César Brioso, author of the book Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Blending the...
ListenNatalie Koch, "Critical Geographies of Sport: Space, Power, and Sport in Global Perspective" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Natalie Koch, Associate Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and editor of Critical Geographies of Sport: Sp...
ListenDanyel Reiche, "Success and Failure of Countries at the Olympic Games" (Routedge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Danyel Reiche, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the American University of Beirut, and the author of Success and Failure of Countries at the Olympic Games (Rout...
ListenPeter Hopsicker and Mark Dyreson, "A Half Century of Super Bowls: National and Global Perspectives on America's Grandest Spectacle" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Super Bowl is a singular spectacle in American culture. More than just a championship football game, the Super Bowl has become an unparalleled display of nationalism, consumerism, and culture. ...
ListenRobert C. Trumpbour and Kenneth Womack, "The Eighth Wonder of the World: The Life of Houston's Iconic Astrodome" (U Nebraska Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It rose against the Texas sun in all its architectural audacity: a domed stadium big enough to cover a baseball field. When it opened in 1965, the Houston Astrodome defied engineering precedent and...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenGrant Farred, "The Burden of Over-Representation: Race, Sport, and Philosophy" (Temple UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Grant Farred, Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University. Farred is the author of The Burden of Over-Representation: Race, Sport, and Philosophy(Temple ...
ListenHoward W. Rosenberg, “Ty Cobb Unleashed: The Definitive Counter-Biography of the Chastened Racist” (Tile Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Howard W. Rosenberg, author of Ty Cobb Unleashed: The Definitive Counter-Biography of the Chastened Racist (Tile Books, 2018). In this deeply researched volume, Rosenberg ach...
ListenShelby Yastrow and Tony Jacklin, “Bad Lies” (Mascot Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Questions about freedom of the press, defamation, libel and slander have been in the news quite a bit lately. Bad Lies (Mascot Books, 2017) tells the story of Eddie Bennison, who is over 50 when he...
ListenJenifer Parks, “The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sport Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape” (Lexington Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Jenifer Parks, Associate Professor of History at Rocky Mountain College. Parks is the author of The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sport Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, ...
ListenJack Gilden, “Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the Modern NFL” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Jack Gilden, author of the book Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the Modern NFL (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). In this groundbreaking book...
ListenAntonio Sotomayor, “The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico” (U Nebraska Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Antonio Sotomayor, Assistant Professor and Librarian of Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sotomayor is the author of Th...
ListenD. G. Surdam and M. J. Haupert, “The Age of Ruth and Landis: The Economics of Baseball during the Roaring Twenties” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by David George Surdam, co-author with Michael J. Haupert of the book The Age of Ruth and Landis: The Economics of Baseball during the Roaring Twenties (University of Nebraska P...
ListenSkip Desjardin, “September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series” (Regnery History, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Skip Desjardin, author of the book September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series (Regnery History, 2018). In this work, which blends sports and history together, Desjardi...
ListenGerald Gems, “Sport and the American Occupation of the Philippines: Bats, Balls, and Bayonets” (Lexington Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Gerald Gems, Professor of Kinesiology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and the author of several books on sports history including Sport in American History:...
ListenGregory Snyder, “Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional Street Skateboarding” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Gregory Snyder, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), and author of Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional Street Skateboa...
ListenJesse Berrett, “Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Jesse Berrett, author of Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Berrett is a high school history teacher at University Hig...
ListenDavid Wanczyk, “Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind” (Swallow Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We all know baseball as one of America’s fondest pastimes, but did you know there’s a version of the sport designed specifically for the blind? It’s called Beep Ball, and the players, with the exce...
ListenAverell Smith, “The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Averell “Ace” Smith, The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Smith is a political consul...
ListenKevin Simpson, “Soccer under the Swastika: Stories of Survival and Resistance during the Holocaust” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Kevin Simpson, the author of Soccer under the Swastika: Stories of Survival and Resistance during the Holocaust (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2016). In Soccer under the...
ListenAmy Bass, “One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together” (Hachette Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Amy Bass, author of the book One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together (Hachette Books, 2018). This is the fourth book for Bass, who is dir...
ListenDavid Rapp, “Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dream of Modern America” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by David Rapp, author of the book Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Rapp spent 30 years as a journa...
ListenDouglas Hartman, “Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy” (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The concept of late-night basketball gained prominence in the late 1980s when G. Van Standifer founded Midnight Basketball League as a vehicle upon which citizens, businesses, and institutions can ...
ListenSridhar Pappu, “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age” (HMH, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Sridhar Pappu, author of the book The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Pappu is The Male ...
ListenMonica Mattfeld, “Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship” (Penn State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Monica Mattfeld’s Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (Penn State University Press, 2017) explores the complex relationship between men and their horses, and r...
ListenPaul Hensler, “The New Boys of Summer: Baseball’s Radical Transformation in the Late Sixties” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Paul Hensler, author of the book The New Boys of Summer: Baseball’s Radical Transformation in the Late Sixties (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). Paul is a baseball historian an...
ListenBrett L. Abrams, “Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Brett L. Abrams, author of the book Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). It is part of a series called Sports Icon...
ListenPaul Beston, “The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We are joined by Paul Beston, author of the book The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled The Ring (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.) Beston links together the long string of American heavywei...
ListenDavid Goldstein, “Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by David A. Goldstein, author of the book Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017.) Goldstein explores the story of the Afric...
ListenJeffrey Kidder, “Parkour and the City: Risk, Masculinity, and Meaning in a Postmodern Sport” (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The meaning assigned to architecture is complex and varied. Urban architecture is often stripped of meaning when people abandon the neighborhoods or are absent of meaning at the time of their incep...
ListenTom Carhart, “The Golden Fleece: High-Risk Adventure at West Point” (Potomac Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you were a cadet at West Point and knew with virtual certainty that upon graduation you would be sent into the teeth of the Vietnam war, what would you do? Well, if you were Tom Carhart and five...
ListenDon Nunley with Marshall Terrill, “Steve McQueen: Le Mans in the Rearview Mirror” (Dalton Watson, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Steven McQueen was known as a great action star, but he also sometimes had a reputation for being troublesome on the set. Don Nunley worked with him as a prop man on Le Mans, a pet project of McQue...
ListenCarlo Rotella and Michael Ezra, eds. “The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside” (U. Chicago, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of mea...
ListenKelly Belanger, “Invisible Seasons: Title IX and the Fight for Equity in College Sports” (Syracuse UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As I write this, the women’s basketball team for the University of Connecticut is in the midst of a 107 game winning streak. It’s quite reasonable to assert that Geno Auriemma will end his career a...
ListenTony Collins, “The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby” (Bloomsbury, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 2017 Six Nations rugby tournament concluded this weekend. England successfully defended its championship, despite losing the last match against a strong Ireland side in Dublin–England’s only lo...
ListenRonojoy Sen, “Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Covering sporting activities from ancient times right up to the modern day, Ronojoy Sen’s Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press, 2016) is at once broad in its scope...
ListenMitchel Roth, “Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo” (U. North Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For more than 50 years, Huntsville prison put on an annual rodeo throughout the month of October to entertain prisoners, locals, and visitors from across the nation. In his new book Convict Cowboys...
ListenSteve Tripp, “Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many scholars of baseball and American sports have focused on Ty Cobb as an integral and controversial character in the history of baseball. However, scholars have ignored the ways in which the sto...
ListenCarroll Pursell, “From Playgrounds to PlayStation: The Interaction of Technology and Play” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Carroll Pursell‘s From Playgrounds to PlayStation: The Interaction of Technology and Play (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) explores how play reflects and drives the evolution of American cult...
ListenRoman Sieler, “Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Roman Sieler’s?? Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a fine-grained ethnographic study of varmakkalai–the art of vital spots, a ...
ListenJessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jessamyn R. Abel’s new book carefully traces the rise and transformations of an internationalist worldview in modern Japan, from its withdrawal from the League of Nations and admission into the UN,...
ListenBob Mionske, “Bicycling and the Law: Your Rights as a Cyclist” (VeloPress, 2007) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Bob Mionske is a Portland, Oregon based attorney whose practice focuses on representing cyclists. He gained his cycling experience at the highest levels, riding twice as a member of the United Stat...
ListenJules Boykoff, “Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics” (Verso, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since the birth of the modern Olympics movement in the late nineteenth century, its leaders have attempted to maintain a strict separation of athletics and politics. Former International Olympic Co...
ListenSimon Creak, “Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the introduction to Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos (University of Hawaii Press, 2015), historian Simon Creak writes that Laos, a country that has never won an...
ListenNorman L. Macht, “The Grand Old Man of Baseball: Connie Mack in His Final Years, 1932-1956” (U. of Nebraska Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the start of The Grand Old Man of Baseball: Connie Mack in His Final Years, 1932-1956, the third volume of Norman L. Macht’s biography of baseball legend Connie Mack, the Philadelphia A’s which ...
ListenYago Colas, “Ball Don’t Lie! Myth, Genealogy and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball” (Temple University Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Leading up to this year’s NBA Finals, sports media outlets offered their take on the most important storylines of the series between the Cavaliers and Warriors. Who will claim his place as the game...
ListenRandy Roberts and Johnny Smith, “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X” (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is there a figure in sports more admired and beloved than Muhammad Ali? Widely revered not only as one of boxing’s greatest champions but also as one of the rare athletes to speak out on political ...
ListenHoward P. Chudacoff, “Changing the Playbook: How Power, Profit, and Politics Transformed College Sports” (U of Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
March Madness is big business. Each year the NCAA collects $700 million for television rights to the men’s college basketball tournament, under the terms of a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with C...
ListenAdam Kucharski, “The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling” (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Adam Kucharski, who won the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, has delivered another winner in an area rife with both winners and losers. The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking th...
ListenAlexander Wolff, “The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama” (Temple UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alexander Wolff is the author of The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama (Temple University Press, 2015). Wolff is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. On the eve of the college bas...
ListenAram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010) from 2010-10-12T18:01:53
I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But no dunks! Russell’s opponents in college and the NBA...
ListenAram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010) from 2010-10-12T18:01:53
I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But no dunks! Russell’s opponents in college and the NBA...
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