If baseball is the sport of nostalgic prose, basketball’s movement, myths, and culture are truly at home in verse. In this extraordinary collection of essays, poets meditate on what basketball means to them: how it has changed their perspective on the craft of poetry; how it informs their sense of language, the body, and human connectedness; how their love of the sport made a difference in the creation of their poems and in the lives they live beyond the margins. Walt Whitman saw the origins of poetry as communal, oral myth making. The same could be said of basketball, which is the beating heart of so many neighborhoods and communities in this country and around the world. On the court and on the page, this “poetry in motion” can be a force of change and inspiration, leaving devoted fans wonderstruck.

Razorback Ridge. Levis Mound. The Underdown. Washburn and Nepco Lake. Whether you’re looking for a snake-like singletrack or a steep descent, whether you want to hit the trails near urban centers or escape to the scenic northern woods and waters, Fat Tire Wisconsin will take you there.

In this updated Second Edition, authors and Wisconsin natives W. Chad McGrath and Mark Parman share the knowledge gained from countless hours of riding Wisconsin’s off-road bike trails. They’ve included twenty-one challenging new trail systems, as well as changes and expansions to older systems. Fat Tire Wisconsin includes details of terrain and levels of difficulty; trail maps, directions to the trail sites, and use fees; and information on organizations, races, and websites.

Worldwide, mountain biking is enjoying ever-increasing popularity. Wisconsin, already a popular and welcoming locale for cycling activities of all kinds, is fast becoming a leader in off-road biking. Fat Tire Wisconsin takes you straight into the heart of everything that off-road Wisconsin has to offer.

From bubbling spring-fed headwaters to quiet, marshy creeks and tannin-stained northern reaches, Wisconsin is home to 84,000 miles of streams. This guide is the ultimate companion for learning about the animals and plants in Wisconsin streams. A collaborative effort by dozens of biologists and ecologists, Field Guide toWisconsin Streams is accessible to anglers, teachers and students, amateur naturalists, and experienced scientists alike.
            More than 1,000 images illustrate the species in this field guide. These images are augmented by detailed ecological and taxonomic notes, descriptions of look-alike species, and distribution maps. The guide identifies:
• more than 130 common plants
• all 120 fishes known to inhabit Wisconsin streams
• 8 crayfishes
• 50 mussels
• 10 amphibians
• 17 reptiles
• 70 families of insects
• other commonly found invertebrates.

Best Regional General Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School Librarians

Best Regional General Interest Books, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

In Fighting for Recognition, R. Tyson Smith enters the world of independent professional wrestling, a community-based entertainment staged in community centers, high school gyms, and other modest venues. Like the big-name, televised pro wrestlers who originally inspired them, indie wrestlers engage in choreographed fights in character. Smith details the experiences, meanings, and motivations of the young men who wrestle as "Lethal" or "Southern Bad Boy," despite receiving little to no pay and risking the possibility of serious and sometimes permanent injury. Exploring intertwined issues of gender, class, violence, and the body, he sheds new light on the changing sources of identity in a postindustrial society that increasingly features low wages, insecure employment, and fragmented social support. Smith uncovers the tensions between strength and vulnerability, pain and solidarity, and homophobia and homoeroticism that play out both backstage and in the ring as the wrestlers seek recognition from fellow performers and devoted fans.

The only comprehensive history of figure skating in over forty years

Figure skating, unique in its sublimely beautiful combination of technical precision, musicality, and interpretive elements, has undergone many dramatic developments since the only previous history of the sport was published in 1959. This exciting and information-packed new history by James R. Hines explains skating’s many technical and artistic advances, its important figures, its intrigues and scandals, and the historical high points during its long evolution.

Hines divides his history into three periods separated by the World Wars. In the first section, he follows functional and recreational ice skating through its evolution into national schools, culminating in the establishment of the International Skating Union and the ascendancy of an international style of skating. The second section explains the changes that occurred as the sport expanded into the form we recognize and enjoy today, and the final section shows how skating became increasingly athletic, imaginative, and intense following World War II, as the main focus turns to skaters themselves. The profiles include some 148 World and Olympic Champions as well as others who, in Dick Button’s words, "left the sport better because they were in it."

Beginning with mythological tales from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scandinavians, Hines describes hundreds who have contributed to the sport. They include figure skating’s patron saint Lydwina of Schiedam, whose late-fourteenth-century skating tumble has been documented in a woodcut; Ulrich Salchow and Axel Paulsen, who gave their names to distinctive jumps; Madge Syers, who entered and medaled at the previously all-male World Championships in 1902; and Sonja Henie, who took skating to the silver screen. The history ends with the 2002 skating season, when Maria Butyrskaya and Michelle Kwan commanded the most attention and an unfortunate judging decision rocked the pairs’ competition, resulting in the adoption of a new judging system.

Beyond the contributions of individual skaters, Figure Skating  also traces the growth of competitions and show skating (professional and amateur), and discussions of relevant social, political, and ethical concerns that have affected the sport. Along with over seventy magnificent historical pictures spread throughout the book, a very special gallery features the picture of every world and Olympic champion. Figure Skating is an informative and inspiring resource, sure to be enjoyed by anyone who has ever skated recreationally or in competition as well as by the many fans who have this beautiful sport as spectators. 

Once a winter pastime for socializing and courtship, skating evolved into the wildly popular competitive sport of figure skating, one of the few athletic arenas where female athletes hold a public profile--and earning power--equal to that of men.
 
Renowned sports historian James R. Hines chronicles figure skating's rise from its earliest days through its head-turning debut at the 1908 Olympics and its breakthrough as entertainment in the 1930s. Hines credits figure skating's explosive expansion to an ever-increasing number of women who had become proficient skaters and wanted to compete, not just in singles but with partners as well.
 
Matters reached a turning point when British skater Madge Syers entered the otherwise-male 1902 World Championship held in London and finished second. Called skating's first feminist, Syers led a wave of women who made significant contributions to figure skating and helped turn it into today's star-making showcase at every Winter Olympics.
 
Packed with stories and hard-to-find details, Figure Skating in the Formative Years tells the early history of a sport loved and followed by fans around the world.

The definitive guide to the eccentric and surprisingly popular sport of rough fishing

Is a carpsucker a carp or a sucker? Where can you find the largest eelpout in the United States? Can you catch creek chubs and fry them for supper?

These questions and more are answered within the pages of Fishing for Buffalo. Rob Buffler and Tom Dickson dispel myths and rumors about rough fish with credible biological information while also demonstrating the joy of angling for nontraditional fish. Its wealth of information qualifies this book as a fishing bible for the growing number of rough fishing enthusiasts in the United States and makes it easy to identify the rough fish you may catch. It even includes a sampling of Dickson and Buffler’s favorite recipes, such as Burbot Boulangère and Deviled Grilled Cisco.Rough fish may be a lot of things—ugly, unruly, or elusive—but they are definitely not boring.

An insider’s look at the skills and thrills of fishing

Fishing is more than catching fish. It is travel, nature, adventure, friendships, and discovery. In Fishing Minnesota, Greg Breining tags along with expert anglers and reports what they have spent years learning. He fishes for Lake Superior steelhead with Shawn Perich, small-stream smallmouth bass with Tim Holschlag, stream trout with Jay Bunke, and north-country muskies with Mark Windels. Along the way, Breining comes to understand not only how they catch fish, but why they go to the trouble.

Nowhere else will you find a comprehensive how-to guide for fishing Minnesota’s many lakes and streams, full of tips from the region’s best tournament anglers, most experienced fisheries biologists, and never-fail professional guides. Breining shares their secrets on such topics as how to snell a yarn fly, where to find the biggest muskies in any lake, and how to pick the best minnows for Mille Lacs. Breining gives us that coveted experience of being in the boat with the pros.

The quest for physical health and fitness has a long history in the United States. From spinach to shredded wheat to patent medicines, from calisthenics to bicycling to organized sports, Americans have searched vigorously and with great imagination for health, vitality, and physical perfection. Focusing on the period from 1830 to 1940, this collection of essays by six distinguished historians explores Americans' fascination with health and sport, a preoccupation that continues even today in the current diet and fitness craze. In his introduction, Harvey Green discusses one of the major ironies of this period: that the "progress" and achievements Americans sought in the economic and technological spheres were in fact endangering their health and weakening the entire body politic. The rapid technological changes taking place in the world forced many people to alter fundamentally their thinking about the importance of health and physical fitness not just for themselves as individuals but also for the good of society. Other topics explored include changing attitudes toward fitness and wellness, how advertising reflected health concerns, iron as a symbol of vitality and strength, the increasing specialization of foods, and the advent of organized and competitive sports.

Since 2001 the Patriots have played in eight Super Bowl championships and won five, a run of excellence unparalleled in all of professional sports. In a league designed to ensure that no one franchise can dominate over time, New England won for over a decade and a half. A dynasty that began with an improbable run to a championship in 2001 has rebuilt, rebooted, and retooled several times over, winning most recently in 2017. But during those years, no other franchise reached the same level of controversy, drama, and turmoil—or even came close. Jerry Thornton, bestselling author of From Darkness to Dynasty, provides an all-access pass to the Patriots’ years of unparalleled greatness from the unique perspective of an observant, obsessive, utterly dedicated fan.

In the past twenty years, big-time stock-car racing has become America’s fastest growing spectator sport. Winston Cup races draw larger audiences—at the tracks and on television—than any other sport, and drivers like Dale Jarrett, Jeff Gordon, and Mark Martin have become cultural icons whose endorsements command millions. What accounts for NASCAR’s surging popularity?
For years a “closeted” NASCAR fan, Professor Jim Wright took advantage of a sabbatical in 1999 to attend stock-car races at seven of the Winston Cup’s legendary venues: Daytona, Indianapolis, Darlington, Charlotte, Richmond, Atlanta, and Talladega. The “Fixin’ to Git Road Tour” resulted in this book—not just a travelogue of Wright’s year at the races, but a fan’s valentine to the spectacle, the pageantry, and the subculture of Winston Cup racing.
Wright busts the myth that NASCAR is a Southern sport and takes on critics who claim that there’s nothing to racing but “drive fast, turn left,” revealing the skill, mental acuity, and physical stamina required by drivers and their crews. Mostly, though, he captures the experience of loyal NASCAR fans like himself, describing the drama in the grandstands—and in the bars, restaurants, parking lots, juke joints, motels, and campgrounds where race fans congregate. He conveys the rich, erotic sensory overload—the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feel—of weekends at the Winston Cup race tracks.

Unique among hiking trails is the one that forms a complete loop around the state of Ohio. That 1,200-mile trail is called the Buckeye Trail. Showing the way on tree trunks, rocks, and other natural signposts are the blue painted markings called “the blue blazes.” In Follow the Blue Blazes, the reader embarks on a journey to discover a part of Ohio largely unseen except along this great path.

Beginning with the startling rock formations and graceful waterfalls of Old Man’s Cave in southern Ohio, and leading clockwise around the state to visit expansive forests, lovely parks, ancient mounds, historic canals and battlefields, and scenic river trails, experienced trailsman Robert J. Pond provides a captivating look at each section of the trail.

Each chapter features an overview of a 100-mile section of the trail and three self-guided featured hikes. The overviews, with accompanying maps, may be read consecutively to acquaint the reader with the entire course of the blue blazes. But most readers will best enjoy the Buckeye Trail by taking the guide along on featured hikes. Each hike is supported by a detailed but easy-to-follow map and includes explicit directions to trailheads and approximate hiking times.

In addition to many outlying areas, the extensive Buckeye Trail is accessible in or near Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Cleveland, and Akron. Robert Pond has supplemented each description with interesting details about the geology and the diverse habitats of flora and fauna. Readers, too, can enjoy the beauty and wonders of Ohio if they Follow the Blue Blazes.

With Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport, diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary experiences of African football players from Portugal’s African colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was Portugal’s increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies.

Cleveland zeroes in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusébio, creatively exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal’s empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as mere colonial pawns.

To reconstruct these players’ transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the components and processes of empire.

In articles for the newspaper O Brado Africano in the mid-1950s, poet and journalist José Craveirinha described the ways in which the Mozambican football players in the suburbs of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) adapted the European sport to their own expressive ends. Through gesture, footwork, and patois, they used what Craveirinha termed “malice”—or cunning—to negotiate their places in the colonial state. “These manifestations demand a vast study,” Craveirinha wrote, “which would lead to a greater knowledge of the black man, of his problems, of his clashes with European civilization, in short, to a thorough treatise of useful and instructive ethnography.”

In Football and Colonialism, Nuno Domingos accomplishes that study. Ambitious and meticulously researched, the work draws upon an array of primary sources, including newspapers, national archives, poetry and songs, and interviews with former footballers. Domingos shows how local performances and popular culture practices became sites of an embodied history of Mozambique. The work will break new ground for scholars of African history and politics, urban studies, popular culture, and gendered forms of domination and resistance.

Women, African Americans, and gays have recently upended US culture with demands for inclusion and respect, while economic changes have transformed work and daily life for millions of Americans. The national obsession with the National Football League provides a window on this dynamic period of change, reshaping ideas about manliness to respond to new urgencies on and beyond the gridiron. Thomas P. Oates uses feminist theory to break down the dynamic cultural politics shaping, and shaped by, today's NFL. As he shows, the league's wildly popular product provides an arena for media producers to work out and recalibrate the anxieties, contradictions, and challenges that characterize contemporary masculinity. Oates draws from a range of pop culture narratives to map the complex set of theories about gender and race and to reveal a league and fan base in flux. Though longing for a past dominated by white masculinity, the mediated NFL also subtly aligns with a new economic reality that demands it cope with the shifting relations of gender, race, sexuality, and class. Indeed, pro football crafts new meanings of each by its canny mobilization of historic ideological processes.

Football (soccer in the United States) has a long history in the Americas, but it currently displays many signs of crisis. In South America the combination of spectator violence, poor business management, and the emigration of players is undermining professional football. In the United States, in contrast, a professional league (Major League Soccer) has taken root in the last decade, and the U.S. women's team has gained international success. Football has always provided its players and fans with identity and belonging, whether to a nation or to a particular social group. It has been both a vehicle for the politically ambitious and an arena in which citizens can make sense of national failings and contest existing power structures. This volume explores many of these themes. The fifteen essays range widely, with theoretical and empirical contributions on the region as whole, as well as chapters specifically on Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and the United States.

The Big Ten . . . the SEC . . . the Final Four . . . sometimes it seems that American higher education is more about sports than studies. Not so, says this well-researched, evenhanded study of athletics in university life. Sports--particularly football--play a key role in defining institutions that might otherwise be indistinguishable and are an indispensable tool in building a sense of community on campus, as well as an important factor in mustering alumni and political support.
While abuses exist, the "football school" is not only a legitimate member of the academic community but an inevitable one as well--and football provides much-needed identity at every level from the local to the national scale. Pointing out that universities compete as much academically as athletically, J. Douglas Toma argues that fielding a winning sports team is a quick, effective way to win recognition and that doing so pays dividends across the board, by raising public awareness (thereby making a school more attractive to potential students and faculty) and by creating a wider constituency of "fans" whose loyalties pay off in increased contributions and appropriations that support academic programs as well. He notes that universities like Harvard and Yale, now eclipsed on the gridiron, were "football powers" in the era when America's westward expansion spawned new schools unable to challenge older institutions academically but able to win acclaim through sports. This fosters a campus and alumni culture based on "football Saturday"--a bonding experience that helped forge a larger community whose support, both personal and financial, has become integral to the life of the institution.
Football U. brings welcome impartiality to a subject all too often riven by controversy, pitting football boosters against critics who complain that academic achievement takes second place to athletic success. But as a tool for creating "brand awareness" as well as local loyalty and widespread support, high-profile athletic programs meet a variety of institutional needs in ways no other aspect of university life can. This, Toma observes, is a two-edged sword, for even as it fosters collegiality, it discourages reform when the pendulum swings too far in the direction of athletic dominance. Nevertheless, Football U. is here to stay.
J. Douglas Toma is Director and Senior Fellow, The Executive Doctorate and Penn Center for Higher Education Management, the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

The Most Important Innovation in the History of Football
In 1913, a small, up-and-coming school came to West Point to challenge the great Army football team. The opposing quarterback dropped back, raised the football, and threw a perfect spiral to his wide open teammate. Again and again the quarterback and his receiver completed passes, resulting in a stunning 35-13 defeat of Army. That school was Notre Dame and the receiver was Knute Rockne: the game of football was transformed. The story of Notre Dame’s passing attack goes back seven years, when the forward pass was first legalized as a means of opening the game up to avoid the fatalities that plagued early football and nearly saw the game banned. A student of the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg, Jesse Harper, envisioned a mixture of precision passing and running throughout the game, and after arriving at Notre Dame, he schooled his team in his new-fangled approach.
In Forward Pass: The Play That Saved Football, Philip L. Brooks introduces the reader to the dirt, spectacle, and emotion of the great teams of the early twentieth century, including Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians, Stagg’s University of Chicago Maroons, Fielding Yost’s Michigan Wolverines, Johnny Heisman’s Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, and Gil Dobie’s Washington Huskies. While most teams experimented with passing, it was Jesse Harper and Knute Rockne who showed how the forward pass could be used as the ultimate offensive strategy and key to the brilliant future of football.

What is the purpose of history today, and how can sporting research help us understand the world around us? In this stimulating book, Nicholas Piercey constructs four new histories of early Dutch football, exploring urban change, club members, the media, and the diaries of Cornelis Johannes Karel van Aalst, a stadium director, to propose practical examples of how history can become an important democratic tool for the 21st century. Using early Dutch football as a field for experimental thinking about the past, the four histories offer new insights into the lives, interests and passions of those connected to the sport in the 1910s and the cities they lived in. How did the First World War impact on Dutch football? Were new stadia a form of social control? Is the spread of the beautiful game really a good thing? And why was one of the sport’s most prominent figures more concerned with potatoes? These stories of early Dutch football suggest how vital sport and history can be in shaping our lives, perceptions and actions, and why we need to challenge the influence they have today. This book also includes a downloadable appendix. Download it here(.xlsx).

Gilbert Patten, writing as Burt L. Standish, made a career of generating serialized twenty-thousand-word stories featuring his fictional creation Frank Merriwell, a student athlete at Yale University who inspired others to emulate his example of manly boyhood. Patten and his publisher, Street and Smith, initially had only a general idea about what would constitute Merriwell’s adventures and who would want to read about them when they introduced the hero in the dime novel Tip Top Weekly in 1896, but over the years what took shape was a story line that capitalized on middle-class fears about the insidious influence of modern life on the nation’s boys.

Merriwell came to symbolize the Progressive Era debate about how sport and school made boys into men. The saga featured the attractive Merriwell distinguishing between “good” and “bad” girls and focused on his squeaky-clean adventures in physical development and mentorship. By the serial’s conclusion, Merriwell had opened a school for “weak and wayward boys” that made him into a figure who taught readers how to approximate his example.

In Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood, Anderson treats Tip Top Weekly as a historical artifact, supplementing his reading of its text, illustrations, reader letters, and advertisements with his use of editorial correspondence, memoirs, trade journals, and legal documents. Anderson blends social and cultural history, with the history of business, gender, and sport, along with a general examination of childhood and youth in this fascinating study of how a fictional character was used to promote a homogeneous “normal” American boyhood rooted in an assumed pecking order of class, race, and gender.

From Darkness to Dynasty tells the unlikely history of the New England Patriots as it has never been told before. From their humble beginnings as a team bought with rainy-day money by a man who had no idea what he was doing to the fateful season that saw them win their first Super Bowl, Jerry Thornton shares the wild, humiliating, unbelievable, and wonderful stories that comprised the first forty years of what would ultimately become the most dominant franchise in NFL history. Witty, hilarious, and brutally honest, From Darkness to Dynasty returns to the thrilling, perilous days of yesteryear—a welcome corrective for those who hate the Patriots and a useful reminder for those who love them that all glory is fleeting.

From 1912 to 1916, a group of baseball players from Hawaiʻ i barnstormed the U.S. mainland. While initially all Chinese, the Travelers became more multiethnic and multiracial with ballplayers possessing Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and European ancestries. As a group and as individuals the Travelers' experiences represent a still much too marginalized facet of baseball and sport history. Arguably, they traveled more miles and played in more ball parks in the American empire than any other group of ballplayers of their time. Outside of the major leagues, they were likely the most famous nine of the 1910s, dominating their college opponents and more than holding their own against top-flight white and black independent teams. And once the Travelers’ journeys were done, a team leader and star Buck Lai gained fame in independent baseball on the East Coast of the U.S., while former teammates ran base paths and ran for political office as they confronted racism and colonialism in Hawaiʻ i.

NASCAR Winston Cup stock car racing is America’s fastest growing and most popular spectator sport. This book is a cultural and social reading of Winston Cup racing, the people who made the sport what it is today, and the corporations who sponsor the participants during their thirty-two race, ten-month quest for the national championship.

“From Six-on-Six to Full Court Press is a complete history of Iowa women’s high school, college, and recreational basketball. Beran’s exhaustive research . . . covers legendary players and coaches, changes in rules, stats on Iowa girls’ high school records, alterations in playing styles and uniforms, along with the heart-stopping excitement of the state tournament.”—Hoop Source

The first full-length study of skiing in the United States, this book traces the history of the sport from its utilitarian origins to its advent as a purely recreational and competitive activity.

During the mid-1800s, inhabitants of frontier mining communities in the Sierra and Rocky mountains used skis for many practical reasons, including mail and supply delivery, hunting, and railroad repair. In some towns skis were so common that, according to one California newspaper, "the ladies do nearly all their shopping and visiting on them."

But it was Norwegian immigrants in the Midwest, clinging to their homeland traditions, who first organized the skisport. Through the founding of local clubs and the National Ski Association, this ethnic group dominated American skiing until the 1930s.

At this time, a wave of German immigrants infused America with the ethos of what we today call Alpine skiing. This type of skiing became increasingly popular, especially in the East among wealthy collegians committed to the romantic pursuit of the "strenuous life." Ski clubs proliferated in towns and on college campuses and specialized resorts cropped up from New England to California. At the same time, skiing became mechanized with tows and lifts, and the blossoming equipment and fashion industries made a business of the sport.

On the eve of World War II, as the book concludes its story, all the elements were in place for the explosion in recreational and competitive skiing that erupted after 1945.