Sport and Society

"The National Football League was founded in 1920 as the American Football Association. At first is struggled in the shadow of baseball as a vaguely disreputable professional sport, and had trouble competing for athletes and fans. Through a series of mergers, moves between cities, and the advent of television, the NFL gradually grew into one of the nation's most successful professional sports, with cities competing for franchises, and networks competing...

Debra A. Shattuck pulls from newspaper accounts and hard-to-find club archives to reconstruct a forgotten era in baseball history. Her fascinating social history tracks women players who organized baseball clubs for their own enjoyment and found roster spots on men's teams. If the women faced financial exploitation and indignities, they nonetheless staked a claim to the nascent national pastime. Shattuck explores how the determination to take their...

"Cycling emerged as a sport in the late 1870s, and from the beginning, Black Americans rode alongside and raced against white competitors. Robert J. Turpin sheds light on the contributions of Black cyclists from the sport's early days through the cementing of Jim Crow laws during the Progressive Era. As Turpin shows, Black cyclists used the bicycle not only as a vehicle but as a means of social mobility--a mobility that attracted white ire. Prominent...