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With extraordinary photographs and fact-filled essays, "Far From Home" gives the sports fan and the historian alike reason to celebrate the incredible rise of the number of Latino players in American baseball and the courage and conviction they have needed to accomplish this feat. In three compelling essays, Tim Wendel tells the story from the first game in Cuba in 1898 and the subsequent diaspora of baseball in the Caribbean all the way through the decades of player development and up to today...

Rather than interpreting the Olympics as primarily a sporting event of international or national significance, this book understands the Games as a civic project for the host city that serves as a catalyst for a variety of urban interests over a period of many years from the bidding phase through the event itself. Traditional Olympic studies have tended to examine the Games from an outsider's perspective or as something experienced through the print media or television. In contrast, the focus pr...

Following on from the hugely successful Best After-Dinner Sports Tales, yet more rousing and rib-tickling stories from the after-dinner speaking circuit, from some of the biggest names in sport as well as well-known celebrities from the world of entertainment. The book will begin with the cricket world, with stories from Australia, West Indies, South Africa, NZ and the sub-continent, before going on to cover many other sports, with a plethora of contributions from the world of rugby, football, g...

The Social Organization of Sports Medicine is the first book-length overview of the social scientific study of sports medicine, drawing together work from an international cadre of scholars who examine and provide interdisciplinary analysis of the dynamic and multi-faceted relationships between sports and medicine and within sports medicine. The book charts changing perceptions of sport within medical discourse, attempts by sports medicine providers to forge professional identities in response t...

Starting university can be a daunting prospect, as students come to grips with new ways of working, learning and thinking. Studying sport at university poses particular challenges, with students often engaged in playing or coaching sport alongside their studies and having unconventional working patterns. Study Skills for Sport Studies is the only complete guide to degree-level study to be written specifically for students on sport-related courses, outlining the core academic competencies neede...

In The Theory of the Leisure Class, his first and best-known work, Thorstein Veblen challenges some of society's most cherished standards of behavior and, with devastating wit and satire, exposes the hollowness of many of our canons of taste, education, dress, and culture.Veblen uses the leisure class as his example because it is this class that sets the standards followed by every level of society. The sign of membership in the leisure class is exemption from industrial toil and the mark of suc...

How Mike Weir became a Canadian hero, winning the 2003 Masters Tournament and proving that sometimes nice guys finish first Lorne Rubenstein has been following Mike Weir’s career since the slim kid from Brights Grove, Ontario, near Sarnia, started winning amateur tournaments. Weir was a star on the Brigham Young University golf team before turning professional in 1992. It was clear to Lorne Rubenstein that the gentlemanly left-hander had what it takes to make it to golf’s pinnacle. But there’s...

A Football Odyssey represents a new slant on football writing. It addresses the game through the eyes of ordinary supporters. If you want to glory in the whims and fancies of 20-year-old millionaires - or the sanitised accounts of the rise and rise of clubs funded by oil-billionaires or leveraged buy outs -then this isn't for you. However, if you want to understand why the Jambos break their fan's hearts - or what it means to downsize your Uniteds - or how this game can shape and mirror lives- t...

Playing While White argues that whiteness matters in sports culture, both on and off the field. Offering critical analysis of athletic stars such as Johnny Manziel, Marshall Henderson, Jordan Spieth, Lance Armstrong, Josh Hamilton, as well as the predominantly white cultures of NASCAR and extreme sports, David Leonard identifies how whiteness is central to the commodification of athletes and the sports they play. Leonard demonstrates that sporting cultures are a key site in the trafficking of r...

Ancient Greece was the model that guided the emergence of many facets of the modern sports movement, including most notably the Olympics. Yet the process whereby aspects of the ancient world were appropriated and manipulated by sport authorities of nation-states, athletic organizations and their leaders as well as by sports enthusiasts is only very partially understood. This volume takes modern Greece as a case-study and explores, in depth, issues related to the reception and use of classical a...

Leisure is a key aspect of modern living. How did our ancestors experience recreation in the past, and how does this relate to the present? To answer these questions, Peter Borsay examines the history of leisure in Britain over the past 500 years, analysing elements of both continuity and change. A History of Leisure - explores a range of pastimes, from festive culture and music to tourism and sport - emphasises a conceptual and critical approach, rather than a simple narrative history - cov...

This book presents the first comprehensive review of factors leading to exclusion from participation in sport in the UK. Structured around key excluded groups, such as the elderly, ethnic minorities, the disabled and rural communities, the book offers an important assessment of sports policy in contemporary Britain, as well as a unique case study of policies to combat social exclusion under New Labour.

The Japanese government seeks to influence the use of leisure time to a degree that Americans or Europeans would likely find puzzling. Through tourism-promotion initiatives, financing for resort development, and systematic research on recreational practices, the government takes a relentless interest in its citizens' "free time." David Leheny argues that material interests are not a sufficient explanation for such a large and consistent commitment of resources. In The Rules of Play, he reveals t...

The untold story of the most contested fixture in world football Liverpool and Manchester. Two gloriously independent-minded, eclectic, culturally vibrant places. Yet the inhabitants dislike each other with a passion that is visceral. It is a divide that spans generations, across class, gender and ethnicity. And it has grown over the years, largely driven by one thing: football. The dark, malignant loathing shared by the followers of Liverpool and Manc...

Advances in genetics and related biotechnologies are having a profound effect on sport, raising important ethical questions about the limits and possibilities of the human body. Drawing on real case studies and grounded in rigorous scientific evidence, this book offers an ethical critique of current practices and explores the intersection of genetics, ethics and sport. Written by two of the world's leading authorities on the ethics of biotechnology in sport, the book addresses the philosophica...

Sport revolves around two things: narrative and numbers. You need the narrative, otherwise why would anyone care about sport? Rivalries, emotions, and sporting legends all require it. But sport also needs numbers. Without them, we have no idea who has won. We need numbers to tell which team is top of the table, or who is the world champion. Sports Geek is a visual and numerical tour through sporting debates and ideas. Teams in all sports use data to create extraordinary analysis of how their pl...

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Football has undergone a period of transformation over the last thirty years. Despite these global processes, different national leagues have adapted in different ways. After an initial period of success directly after Italia '90, Italian football has gone through a period of sustained crisis. It has been blighted by financial mismanagement, corruption scandals a...

Jerry Parkinson spent nearly ten years, from 2000 to 2010, as a member of the NCAA's Division I Committee on Infractions, participating in over one hundred major infractions cases. He came away from that experience-and the experience of reading extensive commentary on infractions cases-with the conviction that most observers do not understand the NCAA's rules-enforcement process, despite the amount of public attention many major cases receive. Parkinson uses his insider's perspective, along wi...