"Struna has written a first-rate book, one that will immediately be hailed as thehistory of 'sports' for this era of American history. It rests on a large body of primary sources, contains an appropriate density of detail, and includes a keen level of analysis."--Benjamin G. Rader, author of American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports
"This book has great potential not only as an academic work for sports historians but for a more general readership as well, both here and abroad. One reason for its wide appeal is that the author's writing style is most attractive--popular without being slangy, academic without being pedantic. Most colonialists will find it both informative in content and provocative in theory."--Stephanie Grauman Wolf, author of As Various As Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans