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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The NBS Summer Seminar: Understanding the Olympic Games 26.07.2012 2:26:15

The 2012 London Olympics are here. To mark the event, New Books in Sports offers another of its occasional seminar episodes. And as with any great seminar, you’ll be eager to tell people what you’ve learned. Our slate of Olympic experts don’t offer any medal predictions. But you will find... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium m...

David Davis, “Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2012) 19.07.2012 1:00:31

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. But the marathon remains 26... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnet...

Brian Ingrassia, “The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football” (University Press of Kansas, 2012) 06.07.2012 56:15

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, revenue-generating sports teams affiliated with universities are a distinctive feature of American sports culture,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

Kevin Young, “Sport, Violence and Society” (Routledge, 2012) 29.06.2012 57:06

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, the opposing running back... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbo...

Timothy Grainey, “Beyond ‘Bend It Like Beckham’: The Global Phenomenon of Women’s Soccer” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) 22.06.2012 54:25

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. In a pairing of the defending champion, Olympique Lyon, and the club... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premi...

David J. Leonard, “After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness” (SUNY Press, 2012) 15.06.2012 57:01

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, as casual fans tuned in to see... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooks...

John Fox, “The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game” (HarperCollins, 2012) 07.06.2012 52:01

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. We play catch in the yard, or shoot baskets in the driveway.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a pre...

The NBS Spring Seminar: Understanding European Football 15.05.2012 2:05:39

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. But the students in my sports history class don’t want to talk about any of... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a p...

Robert Lipsyte, “An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir” (Ecco, 2011) 07.05.2012 1:02:04

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, serving as a copyboy for the surly... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksne...

Paul Dickson, “Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick” (Walker & Company, 2012) 30.04.2012 1:03:41

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, the opposing catcher having just caught a pitch well over... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! htt...

Robert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) 23.04.2012 1:00:56

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, the Hawaii-born Nisei who played professional baseball in Japan in the 1950s... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming...

Randy Roberts, “A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nation” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) 13.04.2012 57:55

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 reports and hours of dissected game films. The players,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a...

Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, “Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War” (Cambridge UP, 2010) 06.04.2012 1:03:17

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. Their invasion of Afghanistan in December... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!...

Paul Watson, “Up Pohnpei: A Quest to Reclaim the Soul of Football by Leading the World’s Ultimate Underdogs to Glory” (Profile Books, 2012) 29.03.2012 49:07

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 waiting... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.sup...

Richard Wilson, “Inside the Divide: One City, Two Teams, the Old Firm” (Canongate, 2012) 22.03.2012 1:06:39

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, fueling emotions as well as ticket sales and media hype. The most famous rivalries typically have bearing for league standings and championships. But many are also... Learn more about your...

Gideon Haigh, “Sphere of Influence: Writings on Cricket and Its Discontents” (Victory Books, 2010) 15.03.2012 1:05:06

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. This advice applies as well for the reader of Gideon Haigh‘s essays on cricket, collected in Sphere of Influence:... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...

Mary Louise Adams, “Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport” (University of Toronto Press, 2011) 08.03.2012 1:05:28

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, like work boots mounted on thick, sharp, rounded blades.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://n...

John Bloom, “There You Have It: The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard Cosell” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010) 27.02.2012 1:03:47

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, the marquee sports announcer for the ABC network. Cosell was known... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our sh...

Peter Millward, “The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 20.02.2012 1:05:22

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. A lucrative television deal with Sky Sports followed soon after, bringing plenty of seed money to... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our...

Stephen Mumford, “Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion” (Routledge, 2011) 13.02.2012 1:00:59

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, closely fought match, highlighted by brilliant individual performances? Your answer to... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our...

Roy MacGregor, “Wayne Gretzky’s Ghost: And Other Tales from a Lifetime in Hockey” (Random House Canada, 2011) 06.02.2012 1:03:22

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. We’d take a few runs down the empty rink, trading... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork....

Andrew Ritchie, “Quest for Speed: A History of Early Bicycle Racing 1868-1903” (Cycle Publishing, 2011) 30.01.2012 1:03:04

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. The history of bicycle racing brings in another key ingredient of the modern age: technology. The sport began only with the invention... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...

Adrian Burgos, Jr., “Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball” (Hill and Wang, 2011) 26.01.2012 54:41

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, entitled Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball (Hill and... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a...

Dennis Frost, “Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan” (Harvard UP, 2011) 24.01.2012 1:07:43

In the celebrity firmament that circles around us, sports stars are among the brightest lights. Kobe, Tiger, Messi, MÃ¡rta, Sachin, and Serena can be recognized from most points on the globe. But other stars are visible only in certain lands: Yuna Kim, Barbora Strycova, Sebastien Chabal, Andres Guardado, Israel Folau, Buster... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support...

Randy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale UP, 2010) 17.01.2012 58:41

“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. “I just give lip service to being the greatest,” said Ali in 1981, after... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https:/...