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Female Gladiators is the first book to examine legal and social battles over the right of women to participate with men in contact sports. The impetus to begin legal proceedings was the 1972 enactment of Title IX, which prohibited discrimination in educational settings, but it was the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the equal rights amendments of state constitutions that ultimately opened doors. Despite court rulings, however, many in American society resisted—and continue to resist—allowing girls in dugouts and other spaces traditionally defined as male territories. 

Inspired, women and girls began to demand access to the contact sports which society had previously deemed too strenuous or violent for them to play. When the leagues continued to bar girls simply because they were not boys, the girls went to court. Sarah K. Fields's Female Gladiators is the only book to examine the legal and social battles over gender and contact sport that continue to rage today.

Thought provoking and timely, Fighting Visibility tells the story of how a sports entertainment phenomenon made difference a part of its brand—and the ways women paid the price for success.

The most authoritative and comprehensive textbook on sport finance has been updated and revised to include in its examination the distinct changes in the economic climate of the sport industry in recent decades, as well as the impacts and challenges the contemporary economic climate presents for the sport industry.

Divided into five sections – finance trends and challenges, economic rationale for public investment, primary sources of funding, revenue from enterprise sources, and fundraising – Financing Sport, 4th Edition also contains a thorough updated examination of venue and sport property revenues, including ticket and merchandise sales, the rise of luxurious and extravagant fan experiences, as well as commercial media rights that stretch across traditional broadcast, satellite, and innovative new web-based outlets for consuming sport content. Also newly updated and expanded are fundraising areas that discuss traditional and emerging trends in sport sponsorship and donation.

Thorough in both its depth and scope, Financing Sport, 4th Edition is an engaging, edifying textbook for sport-related graduate and undergraduate students, teachers, and industry professionals.

Ray Didinger opens his lively memoir Finished Business with the Philadelphia Eagles’ upset win in Super Bowl LII. When the Eagles finally hoist the Lombardi Trophy, Didinger does his best to straddle the emotions of a working reporter and a long-suffering Philly fan. His ability to do that is why he has built up such a loyal following.

Didinger began following the Eagles as a kid, hanging out in his grandfather’s bar in Southwest Philadelphia. He spent his summers at the team's training camp in Hershey. It was there he met his idol, flanker Tommy McDonald. He would later write a play, Tommy and Me, about their friendship and his efforts to see McDonald enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Didinger has been covering the Eagles as a newspaper columnist or TV analyst since 1970. Over the years, he wrote sports for the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News. He later produced Emmy Award–winning documentaries for NFL Films before transitioning to sports talk radio and TV analysis.

In five decades, across multiple media platforms, he has interviewed everyone from Hank Aaron, Wayne Gretzky, Muhammad Ali, Julius Erving, Jack Nicklaus, to Mike Schmidt, as well as writing film scripts for Hollywood stars such as Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. He went to the White House with the U.S. Olympic team and even explored the bizarre world of professional wrestling.

His stories, told in his familiar, breezy style, capture his enthusiasm for sports and his affection for the fans who still mourn the pennant that eluded the Phillies in 1964. Didinger has become synonymous with Philadelphia sports, and his memoir is as passionate as an autumn Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.

“A must-have field guide for fans of Second City area fish.”—Robert Ito, The New York Times Book Review • “A treasure of hardcore fish intelligence and delightful tidbits of fish history.”—Dale Bowman, Chicago Sun-Times

Fish don’t heed state boundaries, and neither does this comprehensive, photo-filled guide to the diverse species of Chicago and beyond.
 
Encompassing southern Lake Michigan, northeastern Illinois, and adjacent areas of Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the Chicago Region is home to rare habitats supporting diverse fish populations. From small creeks to large rivers and from small ponds to one of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystems, Lake Michigan, these systems are home to some 164 fish species representing 31 families. In this essential field guide, the most complete and up-to-date reference for fishes in the Chicago Region, we meet them all—lampreys, sturgeon, paddlefish, gars, drum, darters, perches, sticklebacks, sculpins, and more. Written by leading local ecologists and featuring a pictorial family key, color photographs, detailed species distribution maps, and natural history observations unique to the region, this go-to guide belongs on the shelf—and in the boat—of every angler, naturalist, fisheries manager, and biologist.

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.

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?

With its rugged forests and swift rivers, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula offers the perfect setting for fly fishing. Following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway’s character Nick Adams, Bruce C. Petersen creates a unique coming-of-age memoir that departs from the typical story of growing from teen to adulthood. Instead, Petersen explores his seventh decade, chasing trout in the challenging waters of Northern Michigan while grappling with what it means to grow old. In this absorbing memoir, he relives his most memorable days as a fly fisher and offers thoughtful reflections on the healing power of nature, aging gracefully, and the unstoppable passage of time. 

For 49 years St. Louis was home to two NFL football franchises comprising many colorful and even great players, but ever since the Rams moved back to Los Angeles in 2016, the Gateway City has secured a solid reputation as an NFL ghost town. In Football Town:The Rough and Tumble Gridiron History of St. Louis, the first scholarly treatment of the history of all professional football in St. Louis, Mark Pierce challenges the standard narrative, chronicling the city’s rich yet largely forgotten history of pro football, celebrating its more successful moments on the gridiron, and proving that St. Louis has long been and still is far more than a “Baseball Town.”

Pierce begins with St. Louis’s efforts to compete in the burgeoning NFL in 1923 and 1934-1936, yet the city’s pro football history begins in earnest with the arrival of the Cardinals from Chicago in 1960. The author chronicles the team’s entire 28-season stay in St. Louis, including its most successful period under head coach Don Coryell, from 1973 to 1977, and the inconsistency that prevailed after his tenure. Eventually, revenue concerns, failed stadium negotiations, and other issues culminated in the owner of the franchise’s decision to move the team to Phoenix after the 1987 season, despite offers of better terms at Busch Stadium and the promise of the construction of a new downtown stadium by city and state government leaders. 

Even after the loss of the Cardinals, a craving for pro football persisted in St. Louis, and the search for a new team commenced almost immediately thereafter. Pierce documents the tumultuous process of securing the Rams’ 1995 move from their native Los Angeles to St. Louis, a deal concluded through high-stakes negotiations despite efforts by NFL insiders to prevent the move entirely. Nevertheless, by April that year, St. Louis fans could once again emotionally invest in the NFL—and they did so in earnest. In addition to detailing the ups and downs of the Ram’s subsequent twenty years in the city, Pierce closely examines the “poison pill” made in its original lease agreement with the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, which would ultimately lead to disaster.

Football Town is built on a foundation of 25 interviews the author personally conducted with former players, coaches, and broadcasters, including Pro Football Hall of Famers Dick Vermeil and Jackie Smith; Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster Joe Buck; Cardinals greats Jim Hart, Mel Gray, O.J. Anderson, and Roy Green; and Rams’ Super Bowl champions Mike Martz, Trent Green, Adam Timmerman, Keith Lyle, and Adam Timmerman. 

Accompanied by dozens of photos not seen in decades, Football Town allows those who played the game in St. Louis to tell their stories and share their thoughts on the city’s rich and colorful football history.

Situated in the rugged hills west of downtown Portland, Forest Park is the nation’s premier urban natural sanctuary. It supports essential habitat for hundreds of native plants and animals, including species at risk, and is one of the largest city parks in the world. While extending critical ecosystem services to the region, it offers miles of outstanding hiking trails, all within minutes of the downtown core.  

Forest Park: Exploring Portland’s Natural Sanctuary showcases this treasure in new light, offering a compendium of the most up-to-date and comprehensive information available. Twenty-one hikes covering 75 miles bring a full awareness of the park’s outstanding attributes. Hikes are grouped by theme to encourage people to explore Forest Park’s watersheds; geology; lichens and mosses; vegetation; amphibians and reptiles; pollinators; native wildlife; and wildlife corridors. Beautiful photographs and full-color maps accompany each trail description.  

Forest Park is a shining example of the Pacific Northwest western hemlock community--an ecosystem unique among all temperate forests of the world. It is also an exciting model for a future Urban Biodiversity Reserve, a concept under development recognizing the park’s scientific, natural, and cultural qualities. Forest Park: Exploring Portland’s Natural Sanctuary will help all visitors discover the beauty and wonders of this extraordinary natural resource.

The third edition of Foundations of Exercise Psychology is the most comprehensive textbook of its kind. Robert C. Eklund has joined the writing team of Bonnie G. Berger and Robert S. Weinberg for this edition. The authors expand upon the key concepts and models of the field, focusing on the interrelationships of exercise and psychology. The new edition includes an important new chapter on exercise and cognitive function.

Foundations of Sport Management, 4th edition, features content from a comprehensive collection of leading sport management scholars and industry professionals who bring a fresh perspective to the introductory study of sport management. The text provides the fundamental theories and principles of the discipline in a practical and user-friendly format, as well as an abundance of real-world examples in the sport industry. The fifteen chapters thoroughly examine strategies for sport leadership, sport facility management, event management and tourism, sponsorship, analytics, law, governance, ethics, globalization, and other vital topics in the field of sport management. Foundations of Sport Management is essential reading for entry-level sport management students pursuing this field of study and a career in the sport industry.

With an updated and expanded look at the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the sport industry, the third edition of Foundations of Sport Management will maintain its previous editions stance as one of the most widely adopted sport management foundational texts on the market. Editors Andy Gillentine and R. Brian Crow, along with a team of leading authors, aim to provide readers with a dynamic and comprehensive overview of the core concepts and current trends of the industry. Their years of experience as elite academicians and practitioners make this volume a cutting-edge resource for undergraduates considering or pursuing careers in sport management. Topics covered in this edition include economics and finance, marketing, sponsorship and sales, facility and event management, media relations, governance, and ethics.

Friday Night Fighter relives a lost moment in American postwar history, when boxing ruled as one of the nation's most widely televised sports. During the 1950s and 1960s, viewers tuned in weekly, sometimes even daily, to watch widely recognized fighters engage in primordial battle; the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports Friday Night Fights was the most popular fight show. Troy Rondinone follows the dual narratives of the Friday Night Fights show and the individual story of Gaspar "Indio" Ortega, a boxer who appeared on prime-time network television more than almost any other boxer in history. From humble beginnings growing up poor in Tijuana, Mexico, Ortega personified the phenomenon of postwar boxing at its greatest, appearing before audiences of millions to battle the biggest names of the time, such as Carmen Basilio, Tony DeMarco, Chico Vejar, Benny "Kid" Paret, Emile Griffith, Kid Gavilan, Florentino Fernández, and Luis Manuel Rodriguez.

Rondinone explores the factors contributing to the success of televised boxing, including the rise of television entertainment, the role of a "reality" blood sport, Cold War masculinity, changing attitudes toward race in America, and the influence of organized crime. At times evoking the drama and spectacle of the Friday Night Fights themselves, this volume is a lively examination of a time in history when Americans crowded around their sets to watch the main event.

A multilayered look at one game’s place in American life, From Football to Soccer refutes the notion of the U.S. as a land outside of football history.

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.

Moving from Moneyball and Football Manager to coverage of analytics gurus like Daryl Morey, Buehler shows how a fixation on managerial moves has taken hold across the entire sports media landscape. Buehler’s chapter-by-chapter look at specific media forms illustrates different facets of the managerial craze while analyzing the related effects on what fans see, hear, and play. Throughout, Buehler explores the unsettling implications of exalting the management class and its logics, in the process arguing that sports media’s managerial lionization serves as one of the clearest reflections of major material and ideological changes taking place across culture and society.

Insightful and timely, Front Office Fantasies reveals how sports media moved the action from the field to the executive suite.

The sport business industry is vast and diverse. Today’s students are tomorrow’s professionals, and it is immensely important for these students to attain the contemporary knowledge necessary to operate successfully in an ever-growing industry. Like no other textbook in the field, Fundamentals of Sport Business Marketing 5th Edition covers the practical and theoretical framework necessary for students to understand, and professionals to market any sport-related business in a global economy. Updates to this new edition begin with a title that acknowledges the trillion dollar contribution of the sport business to the global economy. As the most comprehensive sport business marketing textbook to date, this 5th edition encompasses the diversity of spectators and participants, sports and sport businesses that span the industry, well beyond the scope of professional and college sports to include sport marketing research, sporting goods retail and manufacturing, sports broadcast, internet sport business, sport tourism, and parasports (sports and sport businesses for people with disabilities)—in short, the full spectrum of companies in which students of sports programs around the world will seek careers. 

An award-winning teacher and researcher, author of over 250 academic papers published in numerous journals, and the author or editor of 26 books on the subject of sport business marketing, Dr. Brenda Pitts offers in this textbook a wealth of knowledge that is rarely compiled in a single place. Dr. Pitts has taught thousands of students, worked with dozens of professionals in the industry, and brings diverse experience and wisdom to the field and this textbook.

The 5th edition updates and details the sound foundational sport business marketing knowledge that can be applied in any type of sport business setting. This textbook builds the students’ understanding of the theoretical framework of business practices for sport business marketing operations, and serves as an excellent on the job handbook, guide, and reference for professionals in the field.

Latin American athletes have achieved iconic status in global popular culture, but what do we know about the communities of women in sport? Futbolera is the first monograph on women’s sports in Latin America. Because sports evoke such passion, they are fertile ground for understanding the formation of social classes, national and racial identities, sexuality, and gender roles. Futbolera tells the stories of women athletes and fans as they navigated the pressures and possibilities within organized sports.

Futbolera charts the rise of physical education programs for girls, often driven by ideas of eugenics and proper motherhood, that laid the groundwork for women’s sports clubs, which began to thrive beyond the confines of school systems. Futbolera examines how women challenged both their exclusion from national pastimes and their lack of access to leisure, bodily integrity, and public space. This vibrant history also examines women’s sports through comparative case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and others. Special attention is given to women’s sports during military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s as well as the feminist and democratic movements that followed. The book culminates by exploring recent shifts in mindset toward women’s football and dynamic social movements of players across Latin America.