A Companion to American Sport History

A Companion to American Sport History presents a collection of original essays that represent the first comprehensive analysis of scholarship relating to the growing field of American sport history.

• Presents the first complete analysis of the scholarship relating to the academic history of American sport
• Features contributions from many of the finest scholars working in the field of American sport history
• Includes coverage of the chronology of sports from colonial times to the present day, including major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, boxing, golf, motor racing, tennis, and track and field 
• Addresses the relationship of sports to urbanization, technology, gender, race, social class, and genres such as sports biography

Awarded 2015 Best Anthology from the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH)

Steven A. Riess is the Bernard Brommel Research Professor of History at Northeastern Illinois University. His books include City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (1989), Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era, Revised Edition (1999), and The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime: Horse Racing, Politics, and Organized Crime in New York, 1865-1913 (2011), and Sport in Industrial America, 1850-1920, Second Edition (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

Introduction 1
Steven A. Riess

Part I Major Chronological Eras of Sport History 11

1 The Emergence of Sport: A Historiographical Appraisal of Sport in America through 1865 13
James C. Schneider

2 The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, 1865–1920 32
Gerald R. Gems

3 The Interwar and Post-World War II Eras, 1920–1960 60
Ryan Swanson

4 Sport Since the 1960s 84
Russ Crawford

Part II Historical Processes and Sport 107

5 Scientific Habits of Mind, Technological Revolutions, and American Sport 109
Mark Dyreson

6 Urbanization and American Sport 130
Joseph C. Bigott

Part III Major Team Sports 153

7 Baseball Before 1920 155
Leslie Heaphy

8 Baseball Since 1920 177
Rebecca T. Alpert

9 Reconciling the Consequences of Modernity: College Football as Cultural History 202
Kurt Edward Kemper

10 Professional Football 221
Anthony Santoro

11 Basketball 246
Aram Goudsouzian

Part IV Major Individual Sports 269

12 Boxing: The Manly Art 271
Randy Roberts and Andrew R. M. Smith

13 Golf and Tennis 292
Robert Pruter

14 American Motor Sport: The Checkered Literature on the Checkered Flag 313
David N. Lucsko

15 Historians, Track Stars, and Amateurism: Retrospect and Prospects 334
Alan S. Katchen

Part V Sport, Government, and the Global Society 357

16 The United States and International Sport: A Historiography 359
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes

17 The United States in the Modern Olympic Movement: A Historiography 379
Robert K. Barney

Part VI Sport and Social History 403

18 Historians Take on Ethnicity, Race, and Sport 405
Gerald R. Gems

19 The African American Athlete 434
Louis Moore

20 Class and Sport 454
Steven A. Riess

21 Manhood or Masculinity: The Historiography of Manliness in American Sport 479
Brian M. Ingrassia

22 Women in American Sport History 500
Linda J. Borish

Part VII Sport and Capitalism 521

23 Explaining Exceptionalism: Approaches to the Study of American Sports Business History 523
J. Andrew Ross

24 Sport and the Media 552
James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy, Jr

25 Stadiums, Arenas, and Audiences 577
Robert C. Trumpbour

Part VIII Sport and Culture 599

26 Sport and American Religion 601
Richard Kimball

27 Not Always “Natural”: A Historiography of Sport in American Culture 615
Kevin B. Witherspoon

28 Sports Biographies 634
Maureen Smith

Index 656

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