New Books in Sports
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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351
Monica Mattfeld, “Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-...
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 reflects upon how these interactions defined a man’s gen...
30 min
352
Paul Hensler, “The New Boys of Summer: Baseball...
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 and a member of the Society for American Baseball Researc...
59 min
353
Brett L. Abrams, “Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bo...
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 Icons and Issues in Popular Culture. Abrams,
45 min
354
Paul Beston, “The Boxing Kings: When American H...
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 heavyweight champions from the late 19th century until the 1990...
49 min
355
Adam J. Criblez, “Tall Tales and Short Shorts: ...
Today we are joined by Adam J. Criblez, author of the book Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and The Birth of the Modern NBA (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). In his second book, Criblez tells the story of the most maligned decade of profess...
34 min
356
David Goldstein, “Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African ...
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 African-American professional basketball players who practic...
35 min
357
Jeffrey Kidder, “Parkour and the City: Risk, Ma...
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 inception. This leaves the people who inhabit the terrain to...
44 min
358
Tom Carhart, “The Golden Fleece: High-Risk Adve...
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 of his buddies,
55 min
359
Don Nunley with Marshall Terrill, “Steve McQuee...
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 McQueen’s set around the 24-hour endurance auto race in Fran...
49 min
360
Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra, eds. “The Bitte...
“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 meaning you peel away there will always be others beneath ...
48 min
361
Kelly Belanger, “Invisible Seasons: Title IX an...
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 as the most successful coach in basketball history.
76 min
362
Tony Collins, “The Oval World: A Global History...
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 loss of the competition. Meanwhile,
52 min
363
Ronojoy Sen, “Nation at Play: A History of Spor...
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, yet detailed in its analysis of key events.
27 min
364
Mitchel Roth, “Convict Cowboys: The Untold Hist...
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: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo (Univers...
42 min
365
Steve Tripp, “Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American M...
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 story of Ty Cobb intersects with ideas of turn-of-the-cent...
67 min
366
Carroll Pursell, “From Playgrounds to PlayStati...
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 culture. Pursell engagingly examines the ways in which tech...
48 min
367
Roman Sieler, “Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Med...
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 South Indian practice that encompasses both martial and...
75 min
368
Jessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: C...
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, to successive attempts (both failed and successful) to...
59 min
369
Bob Mionske, “Bicycling and the Law: Your Right...
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 States Olympic racing team in 1988 and 1992.
31 min
370
Jules Boykoff, “Power Games: A Political Histor...
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 Committee president Avery Brundage once stated,
59 min
371
Simon Creak, “Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculini...
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 Olympic medal,
59 min
372
Norman L. Macht, “The Grand Old Man of Baseball...
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 he owned and managed had just lost the 1931 World Serie...
53 min
373
Yago Colas, “Ball Don’t Lie! Myth, Genealogy an...
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’s greatest current player,
54 min
374
Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith, “Blood Brothers...
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 issues, Ali holds a place at the pinnacle of sports her...
50 min
375
Howard P. Chudacoff, “Changing the Playbook: Ho...
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 CBS and Turner Broadcasting. The two networks, in turn,
52 min