Kategoria BISAC: Sports & Recreation >> Essays

As Americans, we believe there ought to be a level playing field for everyone. Even if we don't expect to finish first, we do expect a fair start. Only in sports have African Americans actually found that elusive level ground. But at the same time, black players offer an ironic perspective on the athlete-hero, for they represent a group historically held to be without social honor.

In his first new collection of sports essays since Tuxedo Junction (1989), the noted cultural critic Gerald Early investigates these contradictions as they play out in the sports world and in our...

A satiric look at the jeer-ful side of our national pastime

There are countless volumes celebrating the best teams in professional baseball. Unfortunately, winning represents only one side of the game. For every champion's record-setting season, there has been an equally memorable story of defeat. These teams and their shameful contributions to America's national pastime have been a neglected topic in the annals of baseball history. Until now.

In You Stink , two fanatical historians (or historian fans), Michael Aubrecht and Eric Wittenberg, give...

From childhood on, Ernest Hemingway was a passionate fisherman. He fished the lakes and creeks near the family's summer home at Walloon Lake, Michigan, and his first stories and pieces of journalism were often about his favorite sport. Here, collected for the first time in one volume, are all of his great writings about the many kinds of fishing he did--from angling...

Muhammad Ali--arguably the finest athlete of the twentieth century and incontestably one of the most famous Americans of his time--is known the world over, not only for his boxing prowess, but for his rebellious courage and resilience against controversy. He has been both underdog and champion, villain and prince, playboy and staunch Muslim, exalted American and punished conscientious objector. He was the ultimate athlete--Heavyweight Champion of the World--and today confronts the physical debilitations of Parkinson's disease.

A one-of-a-kind volume, The Muhammad Ali Reader...

Tennis smashed onto the worldwide athletic scene soon after its modern rules and equipment were introduced in nineteenth-century England. Exciting, competitive, and uniquely accessible to people of all ages and talent levels, tennis continues to enjoy popularity, both as a recreational activity and a spectator sport.

Life imitates sport in Tennis and Philosophy. Editor David Baggett approaches tennis not only as a game but also as a surprisingly rich resource for philosophical analysis. He assembles a team of champion scholars, including David Foster Wallace, Robert R. Clewis, David...

Given the presumed dominance of American sport, many fans throughout the hemisphere find it difficult to envision the role of sport beyond the confines of their own continent. And yet, world sport consists of so much more than the games Americans play and so much more than the stereotype of cricket for the elite and football for the working class. As worldwide sport continues to gain in popularity, we also see parallels to many aspects visible in North American sport, particularly celebrity and all its trappings and pitfalls.

The success of athletes from other countries in basketball and...