A people's history of sports in the United States : 250 years of politics, protest, people, and play

Summary: Book Description: In this long-awaited book from the rising superstar of sports writing, whose blog "The Edge of Sports" is read each week by thousands of people across the country, Dave Zirin offers a riotously entertaining chronicle of larger-than-life sporting characters and dramatic contests and what amounts to an alternative history of the United States as seen through the games its people played. Through Zirin's eyes, sports are never mere games, but a reflection of - and spur toward - the political conflicts that shape American society. Half a century before Jackie Robinson was born, the black ballplayer Moses Fleetwood Walker brandished a revolver to keep racist fans at bay, then took his regular place in the lineup. In the midst of the Depression, when almost no black athletes were allowed on the U.S. Olympic team, athletes held a Counter Olympics where a third of the participants were African American.

Record details

ISBN: 1595584773 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9781595584779 (pbk.)
Physical Description: xvii, 302 pages ; 21 cm.
print
Publisher: New York : New Press, 2009.
Distributor: New York : Distributed by Perseus Distribution

Content descriptions

General Note:	Originally published: 2008.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages [269]-292) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Series preface -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Until the twentieth century -- Rough riding -- Sports and leisure -- No depression -- War and its discontents -- Have we gone soft? -- Sports on the edge of panic -- Flood gates -- 1980s: welcome to hell -- C R E A M -- More of the same versus change -- Notes -- Index.