Saga of American Sport


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Sportsoziologie, USA.




The New American Sport History


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In The New American Sport History sixteen scholars, many of them among the best known in the field, explore topics as diverse as the historical debate over black athletic superiority, the "selling" of sport in society, the eroticism of athletic activity, sexual fears of women athletes, and the marketing of the marathon. In line with the changing nature of sport history as a field of study, this volume focuses less on "traditional" topics and more on themes of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and national identity, which also define the larger parameters of social and cultural history. It is the first anthology to situation sport history within the broader fields of social history and cultural studies. Contributors are Melvin L. Adelman, William J. Baker, Pamela L. Cooper, Mark Dyreson, Gerald R. Gems, Elliott J. Gorn, Allen Guttmann, Stephen H. Hardy, Peter Levine, Donald J. Mrozek, Michael Oriard, S. W. Pope, Benjamin G. Rader, Steven A. Riess, Nancy L. Struna, and David K. Wiggins.




American Sport Culture


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Going Long


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"In 1959, the NFL had just a dozen teams, with only two located west of the MIssissippi River. For 40 years, it had enjoyed total dominance over the gridiron, tackling rival franchises and knocking them out of the game. But a revolution was coming to American football, and it all began with a man named Lamar Hunt, the Texas millionaire who desperately wanted a league of his own"--Inside cover flap.




Sports and Freedom


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Perhaps more than any other two colleges, Harvard and Yale gave form to American intercollegiate athletics--a form that was inspired by the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry overseas, and that was imitated by colleges and universities throughout the United States. Focusing on the influence of these prestigious eastern institutions, this fascinating study traces the origins and development of intercollegiate athletics in America from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Smith begins with an historical overview of intercollegiate athletics and details the evolution of individual sports--crew, baseball, track and field, and especially football. Then, skillfully setting various sports events in their broader social and cultural contexts, Smith goes on to discuss many important issues that are still relevant today: student-faculty competition for institutional athletic control; the impact of the professional coach on big-time athletics; the false concept of amateurism in college athletics; and controversies over eligibility rules. He also reveals how the debates over brutality and ethics created the need for a central organizing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which still runs college sports today. Sprinkled throughout with spicy sports anecdotes, from the Thanksgiving Day Princeton-Yale football game that drew record crowds in the 1890s to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt on football violence, this lively, in-depth investigation will appeal to serious sports buffs as well as to anyone interested in American social and cultural history.




Making the American Body


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If you thought the fitness craze was about being healthy, think again. Although Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne, Jim Fixx, Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons, and Jillian Michaels might well point the way to a better body, they have done so only if their brands brought in profits. In the first book to tell the full story of the American obsession with fitness and how we got to where we are today, Jonathan Black gives us a backstage look at an industry and the people that have left an indelible mark on the American body and the consciousness it houses. Spanning the nation's fitness obsession from Atlas to Arnold, from Spinning to Zumba, and featuring an outrageous cast of characters bent on whipping us into shape while simultaneously shaping the way we view our bodies, Black tells the story of an outsized but little-examined aspect of our culture. With insights drawn from more than fifty interviews and attention to key developments in bodybuilding, aerobics, equipment, health clubs, running, sports medicine, group exercise, Pilates, and yoga, Making the American Body reveals how a focus on fitness has shaped not only our physiques but also, and more profoundly, American ideas of what "fitness" is.




Judaism's Encounter with American Sports


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Judaism's Encounter with American Sports examines how sports entered the lives of American Jewish men and women and how the secular values of sports threatened religious identification and observance. What do Jews do when a society -- in this case, a team -- "chooses them in," but demands commitments that clash with ancestral ties and practices? Jeffrey S. Gurock uses the experience of sports to illuminate an important mode of modern Jewish religious conflict and accommodation to America. He considers the defensive strategies American Jewish leaders have employed in response to sports' challenges to identity, such as using temple and synagogue centers, complete with gymnasiums and swimming pools, to attract the athletically inclined to Jewish life. Within the suburban frontiers of post--World War II America, sports-minded modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis competed against one another for the allegiances of Jewish athletes and all other Americanized Jews. In the present day, tensions among Jewish movements are still played out in the sports arena. Today, in a mostly accepting American society, it is easy for sports-minded Jews to assimilate completely, losing all regard for Jewish ties. At the same time, a very tolerant America has enabled Jews to succeed in the sports world, while keeping faith with Jewish traditions. Gurock foregrounds his engaging book against his own experiences as a basketball player, coach, and marathon runner. By using the metaphor of sports, Judaism's Encounter with American Sports underscores the basic religious dilemmas of our day.




Sports in American Life


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The third edition of author Richard O. Davies highly praised narrative of American sports, Sports in American Life: A History, features extensive revisions and updates to its presentation of an interpretative history of the relationship of sports to the larger themes of U.S. history. Updated include a new section on concussions caused by contact sports and new biographies of John Wooden and Joe Paterno. Features extensive revisions and updates, along with a leaner, faster-paced narrative than previous editions Addresses the social, economic, and cultural interaction between sports and gender, race, class, and other larger issues Provides expanded coverage of college sports, women in sports, race and racism in organized sports, and soccers sharp rise in popularity Features an all-new section that tackles the growing controversy of head injuries and concussions caused by contact sports




Mawson's Mission


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Before 1968, women’s athletics in higher education meant playdays and sports days. That spring, when the Division of Girls and Women in Sports announced that national collegiate sports championships for women would begin in 1969, Marlene Mawson, a new hire on the physical education faculty at the University of Kansas, was charged with establishing a women’s athletics program. “I was on my own,” Mawson recalls, “because there was no precedent for creating a women’s athletics program with a meager budget.” That meant planning sports competition schedules, staffing coaches, organizing policies and procedures for coaches and athletes, coordinating practice schedules, budgeting, and directing the new KU intercollegiate sports program for women without intervention or guidance. In their first decade, KU women’s teams competed in national championships in volleyball, basketball, softball, and gymnastics. In this book, Mawson, who was inducted into the KU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009, describes her remarkable career, from her early years in Missouri to her retirement. With behind-the-scenes views and insights that reflect a lifetime’s experience, her memoir weaves together the history of the development of women’s athletics at the University of Kansas and the story of the birth of women’s intercollegiate athletics across the United States—from the Olympic Development Committee to Title IX to the NCAA. It is an engaging account of groundbreaking personal achievement by a woman in the world of college sports, and a stirring record of an extraordinary but little-documented decade in the evolution of women’s athletics.




SportsWorld


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Tough and witty, SportsWorld is a well-known commentator’s overview of the most significant form of mass culture in America—sports. It’s a sweaty Oz that has grown in a century from a crucible for character to a complex of capitalism, a place where young people can find both self-fulfillment and cruel exploitation, where families can huddle in a sanctuary of entertainment and be force fed values and where cities and countries can be pillaged by greedy team owners and their paid-for politicians. But this book is not just a screed, it’s a guided visit with such heroes of sports as Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Joe Namath, who the author knew well, and with some he met in passing, like Richard Nixon, who seemed never to have gotten over missing the cut in college varsity football, a major mark of manhood. We see how SportsWorld sensibilities help elect our politicians, judge our children, fight our wars, and oppress our minorities. And now featuring a new introduction by the author,SportsWorld is a book that will provide the foundation for understanding today’s world of sports and the time of Trump. In the America of 2017—where the SuperBowl is worth billions, athletes are penalized or forced out of sports for political and anti-racist activism, and Title IX is constantly questioned and undermined—Robert Lipsyte’s 1975 critique remains startlingly and intensely relevant.