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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426
David Davis, “Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The ...
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 have become meters. The mile is now the 1500.
58 min
427
Brian Ingrassia, “The Rise of Gridiron Universi...
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 explained, widely followed,
54 min
428
Kevin Young, “Sport, Violence and Society” (Rou...
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 harm’s way at outside linebacker. But on one play,
55 min
429
Timothy Grainey, “Beyond ‘Bend It Like Beckham’...
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 of the Women’s Champions League.
52 min
430
David J. Leonard, “After Artest: The NBA and th...
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 were up more than 10 per cent over last year,
55 min
431
John Fox, “The Ball: Discovering the Object of ...
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 use the balls for their intended purposes.
50 min
432
The NBS Spring Seminar: Understanding European ...
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 performances and rising stars.
123 min
433
Robert Lipsyte, “An Accidental Sportswriter: A ...
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 night shift in the sports department,
60 min
434
Paul Dickson, “Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest ...
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 his St. Louis Browns uniform,
61 min
435
Robert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, E...
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 Japan. Another is Wally Yonamine,
59 min
436
Randy Roberts, “A Team for America: The Army-Na...
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 talent, basing their choices on reams of analytical repor...
56 min
437
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, “Dropping the Torch: ...
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 phrase, that the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire.
61 min
438
Paul Watson, “Up Pohnpei: A Quest to Reclaim th...
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 realised that I would never again line up on the rugby pitch ...
47 min
439
Richard Wilson, “Inside the Divide: One City, T...
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 of a season,
64 min
440
Gideon Haigh, “Sphere of Influence: Writings on...
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, memory, and a dictionary.
63 min
441
Mary Louise Adams, “Artistic Impressions: Figur...
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 against sticks and pucks,
63 min
442
John Bloom, “There You Have It: The Life, Legac...
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-night talk show host Johnny Carson, and Cosell himself,
62 min
443
Peter Millward, “The Global Football League: Tr...
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 create a new, breakaway league.
63 min
444
Stephen Mumford, “Watching Sport: Aesthetics, E...
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, neither of which you support, in an epic,
59 min
445
Roy MacGregor, “Wayne Gretzky’s Ghost: And Othe...
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 took to the ice.
61 min
446
Andrew Ritchie, “Quest for Speed: A History of ...
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 repression, globalization.
61 min
447
Adrian Burgos, Jr., “Cuban Star: How One Negro-...
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 his new biography,
52 min
448
Dennis Frost, “Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, ...
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 other stars are visible only in certain lands: Yuna Kim,
65 min
449
Randy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yal...
“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 an idol.
56 min
450
The New Books in Sports 2011 Year-End Book List
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 podcast follows in the spirit of those year-end special ...
126 min