Sports in American History

Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization, Third Edition, helps students grasp the compelling evolution of American sporting practices. This text examines sports history as a social and cultural phenomenon, generates a better understanding of current practices in sport, and considers future developments in American sport.

This comprehensive resource explores sport through various historical periods―including premodern America, colonial times, and the modern era. Sports in American History, Third Edition, features critical new content that will provide a framework for understanding how and why sport intersects with many facets of American society:

• Examination of how women, racial minorities, and ethnic and religious groups have influenced U.S. sporting culture
• Highlights of contemporary issues affecting sport in the twenty-first century, including the Covid-19 pandemic; social justice movements; changes in name, image, and likeness policy; and sports technology
• Reorganized content about sporting experiences in early America that highlight the most influential moments
• Updated People and Places features and International Perspective sidebars that introduce key figures in sports history to provide a global understanding of sport
• Full-length articles from the scholarly journal Sport History Review, delivered online through HKPropel, that supplement the article excerpts and associated discussion questions found in the text

Sports in American History, Third Edition, is unique in its level of detail, broad time frame, and focus on the evolving definitions of physical activity and games. Primary documents―including newspaper excerpts, illustrations, photographs, historical writings, quotations, and posters―provide firsthand accounts that will not only inform and fascinate students but also provide a well-rounded perspective on the historical development of American sport. Time lines of major milestones in sport and society provide context in each chapter, and an extensive bibliography features primary and secondary sources in American sports history.

A starting point into the intriguing field of sports history, this book will help students better understand the complexities of sport in the American experience and grasp how cultural factors and historical events have shaped sport differently in the United States than in other parts of the world.

Note: A code for accessing HKPropel is included with all new print books.

Gerald R. Gems, PhD, is a professor emeritus in the kinesiology department at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. He is a past vice president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport and a past president of the North American Society for Sport History. He presented the 2016 Routledge Keynote, where he received the Routledge Prize in Sport History.

Gems is an international scholar and the author of more than 250 publications, including 28 books. He served as the book review editor of the Journal of Sport History for more than two decades. He also received the Fulbright Senior Specialist award from 2007 to 2012 and was an Illinois Humanities scholar in history from 1999 to 2003. Gems earned his PhD in sports history at the University of Maryland.

Linda J. Borish, PhD, is chair and an associate professor in the department of history at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Borish’s publications in sports history include her work as lead editor for The Routledge History of American Sport (Routledge). She is the author of numerous book chapters about women, gender, American sports history, and American Jewish history, including chapters in Gods, Games and Globalization: New Perspectives on Religion and Sport; Sports in Chicago; Sports and the American Jew; Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics; A Companion to American Sport History; New York Sports: Grit and Glamour in the Empire City; With God on Their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion; and others. Her scholarly articles have been published in the Journal of Sport History, The International Journal of the History of Sport, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, Journal of Jewish Identities, American Jewish History, and others. Borish is the executive producer and historian for a 2007 documentary file—“Jewish Women in American Sport: Settlement Houses to the Olympics”—and is a past research associate of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University.

Borish was selected as the international ambassador for the North American Society for Sport History for 2001-2002 and served on its executive council and publications board as well as serving as co-editor of book reviews for the Journal of Sport History. At Western Michigan University in the College of Arts and Sciences, Borish was awarded the Diversity and Inclusion Faculty Recognition Award for 2019-2020 and previously earned the Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award in Professional and Community Service.

Dr. Borish earned her PhD in American studies from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Gertrud Pfister, PhD, is a retired professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She served as president of the International Sport Sociology Society from 2001 to 2007. Pfister also served as president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport from 1993 to 2000 and won the association’s award for lifelong achievements in the area of sports history in 2005. She is a past vice president of the German Turner-Bund.

Pfister won the Darlene Kluka Award from the Women’s Sport Foundation in 2006, the award of the European Working Group on Women in Sport in 2009, the Dorothy Ainsworth Research Award of the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women (IAPESGW), and the German Gymnastic Association’s Els Schröder Award for research on women and sport in 2013.

She has published more than 40 books and has been awarded two knighthoods from the president of Germany and one from the queen of Denmark. Pfister earned honorary doctorates at the Semmelweis University in Budapest 2007 and at the University of Malmö in 2013. She is to receive a third honorary doctorate from the National University of Taiwan in November 2021. Pfister earned PhDs in sports history and sociology at the University of Regensburg and the Ruhr-University Bochum.