A Companion to American Sport History

A Companion to American Sport History represents the first comprehensive analysis of classic and contemporary scholarship relating to the burgeoning field of American sport history. Featuring contributions from many of the finest scholars working in the field of American sport history, essays begin by tracing the evolution of sports in America from colonial societies through to the era of sport in the United States today. A series of thematic essays go on to cover major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, boxing,   car racing, golf and tennis, and track and field, and more. Individual topics include the relationship of sports to issues of business, manliness, communications, urbanization, and technology. Historiographical essays offer fascinating insights into America’s lengthy obsession with sporting culture, touching on topics such as gambling and crime, heroes and villains, and race and gender. Authoritative and timely, A Companion to American Sport History helps shape our understanding of the complex role of sports in American history.

Steven A. Riess is the Bernard Brommel Research Professor of History at Northeastern Illinois University. His books include City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (1989), Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era, Revised Edition (1999), and The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime: Horse Racing, Politics, and Organized Crime in New York, 1865–1913 (2011) , and Sport in Industrial America, 1850–1920, Second Edition (Wiley–Blackwell, 2013).