New Books in Sports

When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on...

Today we are joined by Dr. Samir Chopra, Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and author of The Evolution of a Cricket Fan: My Shapeshifting Journey (Temple University Press, 2021). In our conversation, we discussed how Chopra became an Indian cricket fan, the unique role that cricket plays in immigrant South Asian communities in Au...

Much is known about the physical strain that athletes’ bodies are subjected to, but until recently, the role of psychological factors in risk and rehabilitation has been poorly understood. In The Mental Impact of Sports Injury (Routledge, 2021), Dr. Carly McKay bridges the gap between academic research and practical settings in an informative, yet easy to follow guide to the psychology of sports i...

There have been other biographies of Roger Federer, but never one with this kind of access to the man himself, his support team, and the most prominent figures in the game, including such rivals as Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Roddick. In The Master: The Brilliant Career of Roger Federer (Twelve, 2021), New York Times correspondent Christopher Clarey sits down with Federer and those clos...

Today we are joined by Dr. Michella Marino, the Deputy Director of the Indiana Historical Bureau, a division of the Indiana State Library, and the author of Roller Derby: The History of an American Sport (University of Texas Press, 2021). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of Roller Derby, its radically progressive politics in mid-century America, and its reinvention in the 21st century...

Big money NCAA basketball had its origins in a many-sided conflict of visions and agendas. On one side stood large schools focused on a commercialized game that privileged wins and profits. Opposing them was a tenuous alliance of liberal arts colleges, historically black colleges, and regional state universities, and the competing interests of the NAIA, each with distinct interests of their own. K...

Today we are joined by Heather Dichter, Associate Professor of Sports History and Sports Management at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. She is also the author of Bidding for the 68 Olympic Games: International Sport’s Cold War Battle with NATO (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of the East Germa...

Today I talked to Martin Wells about his new book No One Playing: The Essence of Mindfulness in Golf and in Life (John Hunt, 2022).  To imagine you’re in control, on a golf course or otherwise in life, is “absurd” explains Martin Wells. It’s not that one gets into the zone; instead, the zone finds you. In those and other ways, this delightful book and author both honor golf as a sport and find muc...

When I was a teenager, I spent entirely too much time at the Pontiac Silverdome watching the Detroit Pistons play basketball. In all the games I watched, it never occurred to me to wonder why a professional basketball team was playing in a cavernous, multi-purpose stadium entirely unsuited to basketball. Frank Andre Guridy begins his wonderful book The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Cult...

Electrifying athletes like Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci helped make women’s artistic gymnastics one of the most popular events in the Olympic Games. But the transition of gymnastics from a women’s sport to a girl’s sport in the 1970s also laid the foundation for a system of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of gymnasts around the world.  In Degrees of Difficulty: How Women's Gymnastics Rose...

Today we are joined by Alistair Shearer, a freelance scholar of South Asian religion and culture, and teacher of yoga and the psychology of yoga. He is also the author of The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West (Hurst and Co, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of yoga, the differences between mind and body yoga practices, and the fascinating individuals responsib...

The Mind-Body Problem is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Janko Tipsarevic, who is a former professional tennis player with a career-high singles ranking of world no. 8 and founder and CEO of Tipsarevic Tennis Academy in Belgrade, Serbia. This conversation gives behind-the-scenes insights on what it takes to achieve excellence in professional sports, what mindset...

Jethro Binns was rated 84th in the world squash rankings. A terrible accident on court cut his career short, later he founded Squashskills, which is now the world's leading online squash training resource. Jethro's Twitter Jethro's squash ranking More about Jethro Binns on his business webiste Just Jack Just Jack Music Drive by Dan Pink  About your host Richard Lucas Richard is a business and soci...

Power and Politics in World Athletics: A Critical History (Routledge, 2021) by Jörg Krieger provides the first detailed history of one of the most powerful international sport organisations, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), since 2019 known as World Athletics. The book critically assesses the internal power relations within the IAAF by focusing on the IAAF leadership....

Several high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault have helped the #MeToo movement in China continue to make impacts on a society that is highly controlled and surveilled. Most recently, tennis star Peng Shuai’s saga has accused former top Chinese Communist Party leader, Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Although Peng did not say that she is part of the #MeToo movement, her speaking out has...

Today we are joined by William J. Morgan, Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and the author of Sport and Moral Conflict: A Conventionalist Theory (Temple University Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed three theories of sports ethics (formalism, internalism/interpretivism, and conventionalism.) We looked at how sports philosophers use historical controversies a...

In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem. By “taking a knee,” Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick’s simple act spread like wildfire...

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dante Stewart’s path through college and into his current graduate school, playing football for Clemson, why former college athletes need to advocate for current student players’ rights, why he chose to go into the seminary at Emery, his grandmother, and a discussion of Shoutin’ in The Fire: An American Epistle. Our guest is: Dante S...

From beer labels to literary classics like A River Runs Through It, trout fishing is a beloved feature of the iconography of the American West. But as Jen Brown demonstrates in Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West (U Washington Press, 2017), the popular conception of Rocky Mountain trout fishing as a quintessential experience of communion with nature belies the sp...

Today I talked to Ben Guest about his new book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: A Namibian Odyssey (2021). Pressure plays, buzzer-beaters, and mindfulness meditation: A team of teenagers goes for the championship in Namibia’s professional basketball league. Ben Guest takes a high school coaching gig on the other side of the world. On the first day of practice one of the ten players can’t co...

Today we are joined by Rebecca Joyce Kissane, Professor of Sociology at Lafayette University, and Sarah Winslow, Professor of Sociology at Clemson University, who together are the authors of Whose Game?: Gender and Power in Fantasy Sports (Temple University Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed why people play fantasy sports, how men and women experience fantasy sports differently, and w...

"They don't know me. They don't know what I'm capable of." Diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder, a form of autism, as a toddler, Anthony Ianni wasn't expected to succeed in school or participate in sports, but he had other ideas. As a child, Ianni told anybody who would listen, including head coach Tom Izzo, that he would one day play for the Michigan State Spartans. Centered: Autism, B...

Both a symbol of the Mubarak government’s power and a component in its construction of national identity, football served as fertile ground for Egyptians to confront the regime’s overthrow during the 2011 revolution. With the help of the state, appreciation for football in Egypt peaked in the late 2000s. Yet after Mubarak fell, fans questioned their previous support, calling for a reformed footbal...

The battle between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns is remembered as one of the greatest fights of all time. But in the months before the two finally collided on April 15, 1985, there was a feeling in the air that boxing was in trouble. The biggest name in the business, Sugar Ray Leonard, was retired with no logical replacement in sight, while the American Medical Association was calling...

We’re celebrating our one-year anniversary with this interview, and so I wanted to introduce a special guest for today: Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, talented writer, journalist and dear friend. We’re going to talk—mostly—about Nur’s latest work: an essay for the collection Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond (Harper Perennial: 2021), edited by Halimah Marcus. Hor...