- Globalizing Sport
- Barbara J. Keys
- In this impressive book, Barbara Keys offers the first major study of the political and cultural ramifications of international sports competitions in the decades before World War II. Focusing on the United States, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, she examines the transformation of events like the Olympic Games and the World Cup from relatively small-scale events to the expensive, political, globally popular extravaganzas familiar to us today.
- Hardcover 2006
- In Praise of Athletic Beauty
- Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
- 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 the pleasure we take in watching athletic events. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht argues that the fascination with watching sports is probably the most popular and potent contemporary form of aesthetic experience. Exploring athletic beauty, this book makes us understand the widespread passion sport inspires as an untamed form of aesthetic fascination.
- Hardcover 2006
- Muscular Christianity
- Clifford Putney
- In this fascinating study, Putney details how Protestant leaders promoted competitive sports and physical education to create an ideal of Christian manliness.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2003
- Olympic Dreams
- Guoqi Xu
- Foreword by William C. Kirby
- Already the world has seen the political, economic, and cultural significance of hosting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing—in policies instituted and altered, positions softened, projects undertaken. But will the Olympics make a lasting difference? This book approaches questions about the nature and future of China through the lens of sports—particularly as sports finds its utmost international expression in the Olympics.
- Hardcover 2008
- Playing with God
- William J. Baker
- Like no other nation on earth, Americans eagerly blend their religion and sports. This book traces this dynamic relationship from the Puritan condemnation of games as sinful in the seventeenth century to the near deification of athletic contests in our own day.
- Hardcover 2007
- The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub
- Edited by Randy Roberts
- This book is a collection of original essays about the people and places that live in the minds and memories of Bostonians and all Americans. From the Boston of the young Bambino and even younger Francis Ouimet to the glories and agonies of 1986 and the struggles to keep the Patriots in town, each chapter focuses on the games and the athletes, but also on which sports have defined Boston and Bostonians. Pursuing the legend and the lore, these essays celebrate the players, the games, and the arenas that are at the heart of the city.
- Hardcover 2005