Louis Moore draws on the life stories of African American fighters active from 1880 to 1915 to explore working-class black manhood. As he details, boxers bought into American ideas about masculinity and free enterprise to prove their equality while using their bodies to become self-made men. The African American middle class, meanwhile, grappled with an expression of public black maleness they saw related to disreputable leisure rather than respectable labor. Moore shows how each fighter conformed to middle-class ideas of masculinity based on his own judgment of what culture would accept. Finally, he argues that African American success in the ring shattered the myth of black inferiority despite media and government efforts to defend white privilege.

“A thought-provoking—and academically rigorous—defense of the grace and aesthetic worth of sports.” —Sports Illustrated

By the hundreds of millions we show up, stand in line, turn on, and tune in to watch, mesmerized, as athletes perform. And yet this experience, so widely craved and intensely felt, we commonly dismiss as “only a game.” A book that looks beyond the usual explanations of why sports fascinates, In Praise of Athletic Beauty also strives for a language that can frame—even enhance—the pleasure we take in watching athletic events.

The vicarious thrill, anxiety release, competitive spirit: in place of these traditional answers to the mystery of sports’ allure, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht proposes a more powerful and provocative alternative. The fascination with watching sports, he argues, is probably the most popular and potent contemporary form of aesthetic experience—in the classic, very literal sense of this concept. In exploring this idea, Gumbrecht develops a lucid reflection on the pleasures of sports spectatorship and the nature of athletic beauty. Where we might readily pronounce certain athletic moves and plays “beautiful,” this book gives us the means to explore, understand, and enjoy even more acutely the aesthetic experience that our words-in-passing barely suggest.

With a new perspective on the appreciation of—and, indeed, a new tone of praising—sports, Gumbrecht also offers a new way of narrating the history of athletics and a fresh vocabulary for analyzing various sports. Exploring athletic beauty, this book makes us understand the widespread passion sport inspires as an untamed form of aesthetic fascination.

Learn What the Experts Know About the “Sport of Kings”

With its fast pace, beautiful animals, high stakes, and colorful pageantry, horseracing easily captures the attention of even first-time viewers. While recognizing horseracing as a fascinating sport, most fans know little about this billion-dollar business. Every racehorse and jockey goes through years of training, horses have natural cycles of conditioning, and each track offers its own challenges. Understanding what goes on behind the scenes will make every race more enjoyable profitable for those who wager.

Insider’s Guide to Horseracing is a quick and informative tour of the sport from the moment a foal is tapped for training and the kinds of equipment a horse wears to how wagering works and the different types of races. Written by an experienced horse industry professional and fully illustrated, this guide explains what to look for, understanding what you see, making sense of racing columns, and ways to make a trip to the track more memorable, such as visiting the saddling paddock. Here a reader will not find complex or magic formulas for picking winners or dry statistics; instead the Insider’s Guide to Horseracing gives readers exact information from an expert that will add to the excitement of racing and will allow readers to make better informed decisions all.

“An excellent book.”—Horse-Races.net

“Landers drew upon his longtime experience in various phases of the horse industry to produce this fan-oriented book, which he says is intended to ‘educate people on the workings of a racetrack and what goes on behind the scenes.’ It was inspired by the many questions he has been asked over the years.”—N.Y. Thoroughbred Horseman’s Association Newsletter

Contents:
1. A brief history of the sport
2. What to look for in a horse
3. How to read track conditions
4. Understanding distance
5. Types of wagering, races, and handicapping
6. The jockey and trainer
7. Ownership
8. Information on major races and racetracks in North America

On Boston Common stands a monument dedicated to the Oneida Football Club. It honors the site where, in the 1860s, sixteen boys played what was then called the “Boston game”—an early version of football in the United States. The boys were largely the sons of upper-class Boston Brahmins, and they lived through the transformative periods of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. Later as they grew old, in the 1920s, a handful of them orchestrated a series of commemorative events about their boyhood game. Benefitting from elite networks developed through the city’s social and educational institutions, including Harvard University, they donated artifacts (such as an oddly shaped, battered black ball) to museums, deposited self-penned histories into libraries and archives, and erected bronze and stone memorials, all to elevate themselves as the inventors of American football (and later, by extension, soccer). But was this origin story of what, by then, had become one of America’s favorite games as straightforward as they made it seem or a myth-making hoax?

In Inventing the Boston Game, Kevin Tallec Marston and Mike Cronin investigate the history of the Oneida Football Club and reveal what really happened. In a compelling, well told narrative that is informed by sports history, Boston history, and the study of memory, they posit that these men engaged in self-memorialization to reinforce their elite cultural status during a period of tremendous social and economic change, and particularly increased immigration. This exploration of the Club’s history provides fascinating insight into how and why origin stories are created in the first place. 

The recent flashpoint of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee renews a long tradition of athlete-activists speaking out against racism, injustice, and oppression. Like Kaepernick, Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos—among many others, of all races, male and female, pro and amateur—all made the choice to take a side to command public awareness and attention rather than “shut up and play,” as O. J. Simpson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods did. Using their celebrity to demand change, these activists inspired fans but faced great personal and professional risks in doing so. It Was Always a Choice traces the history and impact of these decisive moments throughout the history of U.S. sports.

David Steele identifies the resonances and antecedents throughout the twentieth century of the choices faced by athletes in the post-Kaepernick era, including the advance of athletes’ political organizing in the era of activism following the death of George Floyd. He shows which athletes chose silence instead of action—“dropping the baton,” as it were—in the movement to end racial inequities and violence against Black Americans. The examples of courageous athletes multiply as LeBron James, Megan Rapinoe and the activist-athletes of the NBA, WNBA, and NFL remain committed to fighting daily and vibrantly for social change.