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A brief history of American sports / Elliott J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Gorn, Elliott J., 1951-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Sports--United States--History.
- Sports.
- United States.
- History.
- Genre:
- History.
- Physical Description:
- xiv, 323 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
- Edition:
- Second edition.
- Place of Publication:
- Urbana ; Springfield ; Chicago : University of Illinois Press, [2013]
- Summary:
- Elliott J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein show us where our games and pastimes came from, how they developed, and what they have meant to Americans. The great heroes of baseball and football are here, as well as the dramatic moments of boxing and basketball. Beyond this, the authors show us how sports fit into the larger contours of our past. For this new edition, the authors have updated the book to include a discussion of performance-enhancing drugs; player salaries, unions, and the business of internationalizing sport; Title DC and gender in American sports; race, especially the entry of Latino and Asian athletes; and the corporatization of amateur-athletics. A Brief History of American Sports reveals that from colonial times to the present, sports have been central to American culture and a profound expression of who we are. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Part I America Becomes a Sporting Nation
- 1 Colonists at Play
- "Virgin Land" 3
- English Sports 6
- The Virginia Ethic 17
- The New England Way 30
- The Middle Colonies 37
- Sports and the New Nation 42
- 2 "Saints and Their Bodies": Sport Through 1860
- The Adams Family 47
- Victorian Culture and the Attack on Traditional Sports 49
- The Beginnings of Modern American Sports 64
- Muscular Christians and Brawny Brahmins 81
- 3 "Vigorous, Manly, Out-of-Door Sports": The Gilded Age
- "Healthful and Invigorating Sports" 98
- Sport and Society 105
- The Rise of Mass Sports: Boxing and Baseball 114
- Elite Sports 129
- "The Strenuous Life" 138
- Part II Sport and its Discontents
- 4 Sports with a Mission: Football and Basketball
- Walter Camp and the Bureaucratization of the Strenuous Life 153
- Football, Alumni, and the Control of the University 164
- Progressives, Play, and Basketball 169
- World War I: The Great Unifier 177
- 5 Play, Business, and Space: Sports and the Public Sphere
- Home Teams 183
- Sports Heroes and Mass Culture 188
- Gender and Sport 197
- Racial Integration 209
- 6 Money, Television, Drugs, and the Win: Dilemmas of Modern Sports
- Amateur Ideals and Sporting Reality 222
- Twentieth-Century Amateurism 228
- The Impact of Television 236
- The Historical Roots of the Drug Problem in Sports 241
- 7 Sports for a New Century
- An Explosion of Sports 251
- "The Steroid Era" 254
- Money and Sport 263
- The Level Playing Field 272.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-308) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780252079481
- 0252079485
- OCLC:
- 835616889
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