Peter Westwick & Peter NeushulThe World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing

December 2, 2013

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, Pelé, Wayne Gretzky, Don Bradman.  Given that these were readers of The Atlantic, there were some more thoughtful answers as well: Canadian athlete and cancer-research activist Terry Fox, Czech distance […]

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Lindsay KrasnoffThe Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010

November 14, 2013

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, and then lost in the first game of the knockout stage.  The official noted that Europe's top teams, such as the first-place Soviet Union, […]

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The NBS Fall Seminar: Sports Memoirs

October 7, 2013

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 instance, the past week has brought the release of new memoirs by Manchester United midfielder Paul Scholes and Olympic rower Katherine Grainger, […]

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David LittleThe Sports Show: Athletics as Image and Spectacle

September 24, 2013

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 particular play that the photographer captured.  I experienced this recently when one of my Facebook friends posted a new […]

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Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann (eds.)Africa’s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space

September 5, 2013

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 land.  In fact, though, the African-ness of the South African World Cup was pretty thin, when not wholly fabricated.  For example, the music […]

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Tony CollinsSport in Capitalist Society: A Short History

August 13, 2013

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 sports.  Modern sports are distinct in practice and purpose from the ball games of Mayan Central America or the chaotic […]

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Chris Anderson and David SallyThe Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong

August 1, 2013

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 guy, a native of the American Midwest who’d been raised on baseball, basketball, and hockey, is amazed by the throw and the havoc […]

Interview with Chris Anderson and David Sally [ 48:08 ] Play Now| Play in Popup | Download
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Peter HansenThe Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment

July 9, 2013

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 competitive capitalism, an emphasis on calculation and measurement, the advance of secularization.  But this attention to economic, social, and political factors has missed one important piece.  For […]

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David VaughtThe Farmer’s Game: Baseball in Rural America

June 22, 2013

[Cross-posted from New Books in American Studies] Contemporary baseball seems like a big city game. Major League Baseball does not have a Green Bay Packers, a small-market team that can contend with the big shots. As David Vaught reminds us in The Farmer's Game: Baseball in Rural America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), however, baseball has rural roots. Stepping […]

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Samir ChopraBrave New Pitch: The Evolution of Modern Cricket

June 17, 2013

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 selected for the league’s teams, while other foreign cricketers were withdrawn by their national boards at various points in the tournament for […]

Interview with Samir Chopra [ 45:48 ] Play Now| Play in Popup | Download
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