New Books Network

New Books in Sports

Sports EN ↓ 501 episodes

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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠ newbooksnetwork.com ⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠ https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ ⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Sup...

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Kelly Belanger, “Invisible Seasons: Title IX and the Fight for Equity in College Sports” (Syracuse UP, 2016) 20.03.2017 1:18:09

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. In the excitement of setting so many... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! ht...

Tony Collins, “The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby” (Bloomsbury, 2015) 19.03.2017 53:56

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, the new Super Rugby season just began, with clubs traveling between Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and now... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm...

Ronojoy Sen, “Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India” (Columbia UP, 2016) 06.03.2017 29:01

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. From football, to the Olympics, to cricket the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium membe...

Mitchel Roth, “Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo” (U. North Texas Press, 2016) 01.02.2017 44:13

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 (University of North Texas Press, 2016), Sam Houston State... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a...

Steve Tripp, “Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) 30.01.2017 1:09:08

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-century masculinity and honor. Steve Tripp in his new book... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becomin...

Carroll Pursell, “From Playgrounds to PlayStation: The Interaction of Technology and Play” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015) 29.12.2016 50:29

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 technology affects play and play shapes people. The objects that children (and adults) play with... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm...

Roman Sieler, “Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India” (Oxford UP, 2015) 28.10.2016 1:17:35

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 medical activities. The interview explores how varmakkalai relates to the wider field of... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad...

Jessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) 24.10.2016 1:01:20

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 host the Olympics in Tokyo, to important wartime and postwar conferences... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support...

Bob Mionske, “Bicycling and the Law: Your Rights as a Cyclist” (VeloPress, 2007) 13.10.2016 33:05

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. Mionske was inspired to write Bicycling and the Law: Your Rights... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a...

Jules Boykoff, “Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics” (Verso, 2016) 11.08.2016 1:01:41

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, “We actively combat the introduction of politics into the Olympic movement.” But this attempt to... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adch...

Simon Creak, “Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) 27.07.2016 1:01:17

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, may seem an unlikely place to study the history of sport. Yet from the uplands of... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium...

Norman L. Macht, “The Grand Old Man of Baseball: Connie Mack in His Final Years, 1932-1956” (U. of Nebraska Press, 2015) 28.06.2016 55:09

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 Series to the St. Louis Cardinals.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https...

Yago Colas, “Ball Don’t Lie! Myth, Genealogy and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball” (Temple University Press, 2016) 08.06.2016 56:14

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, LeBron James or Stephen Curry? How will Cleveland fill the role of underdog?... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a p...

Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith, “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X” (Basic Books, 2016) 30.04.2016 51:45

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 heroes. In their new... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksn...

Howard P. Chudacoff, “Changing the Playbook: How Power, Profit, and Politics Transformed College Sports” (U of Illinois Press, 2015) 11.04.2016 53:48

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, bring in just over a billion dollars each year in... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a p...

Adam Kucharski, “The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling” (Basic Books, 2016) 31.03.2016 52:42

Adam Kucharski, who won the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, has delivered another winner in an area rife with both winners and losers. The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling (Basic Books, 2016) is a brilliant, fascinating, and sometimes slightly terrifying look... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becomi...

Alexander Wolff, “The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama” (Temple UP, 2015) 30.03.2016 19:11

Alexander Wolff is the author of The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama (Temple University Press, 2015). Wolff is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. On the eve of the college basketball championship, The Audacity of Hoop suggests that the game is more than just shooting hoops.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premiu...

Alan McDougall, “The People’s Game: Football, State and Society in East Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2014) 24.03.2016 49:52

In The People’s Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Alan McDougall looks at football from the top-down and bottom-up: as a tool of the state, as forming regional identities in East Germany and in a reunified Germany, and as a popular pastime. Although characterized by mediocrity compared... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our...

Julie Des Jardins, “Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man” (Oxford University Press, 2015) 06.02.2016 56:14

In anticipation of Super Bowl 50, Sports Illustrated and WIRED magazines teamed up to speculate about the state of football fifty years from now, at the time of Super Bowl 100. Of course, the big question that arises when considering the future of the football is whether the sport will... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!...

Charles Fountain, “The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball” (Oxford UP, 2015) 20.11.2015 49:03

Gambling and sports have been in the news lately in the US. Authorities in Nevada and New York have shut down the fantasy sports operatorsDraftKings and FanDuel in their states, judging that their daily fantasy games constitute illegal gambling. Both companies had already come under scrutiny this past October, when... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show...

David Zang, “I Wore Babe Ruth’s Hat: Field Notes from a Life in Sports” (University of Illinois Press, 2015) 13.10.2015 51:47

How would you write your sports memoir? Maybe you’d recall a memorable trip to the stadium when you were young, or even getting an autograph from one of your favorite players. Was there a notable victory – or defeat – that marked your days as a player? Or are the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork...

Annie Blazer, “Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry” (NYU Press, 2015) 08.10.2015 1:12:51

In her new book, Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry (NYU Press, 2015), Annie Blazer shows through archival research and participant-observation how the paradigm of sports ministry transformed from one centered on celebrity male athletes using their fame to explicitly call audiences to conversion... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...

David Snowdon, “Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World” (Peter Lang, 2013) 04.09.2015 51:20

When ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of African American slang and pop culture references. His signature phrases are now commonly used terms in the American lexicon: “As cool as the other side... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a prem...

David George Surdham, “The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989” (U of Illinois Press, 2015) 24.07.2015 18:20

David George Surdham is the author of The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989 (University of Illinois Press, 2015). Surdham is Associate Professor of Economics at Northern Iowa University. Just back from the Major League Baseball All-Star break, Surdham has written a book for sports lovers.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support...

Eric Reed, “Selling the Yellow Jersey: The Tour de France in the Global Era” (University of Chicago Press, 2015) 17.07.2015 1:10:17

The Tour de France is happening right now! The 2015 edition started on July 4th and will continue until July 26th. I’m excited to be able to share this interview with Eric Reed about his new book, Selling the Yellow Jersey: The Tour de France in the Global Era (University... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newboo...