A noted authority on ancient sport discusses various ways in which the ancient Greeks, as well as people today, used sports to achieve social status.

A richly researched historical and cultural study of capoeira, the Brazilian martial art/dance that is spreading around the world.

From 1896 to 1935, the flamboyant and controversial Billy Sunday preached his version of the gospel to millions of people across the nation. In this nontraditional biography of the man regarded by his enthralled fans as God's unconventional messenger to a sinful world, the curator of the Billy Sunday Historic Site Museum recreates Sunday's life through a material culture lens. W. A. Firstenberger views the photographic record and the print record as well as the landscape, structure, and contents of the Sunday home in Winona Lake, Indiana, to give us an intimate view of Sunday and his family. Through an organizational scheme that incorporates memorabilia from childhood (samplers, Civil War badges), baseball (Billy's 1891 Philadelphia contract, scorecards), evangelism (cartoons, books such as Monkeys and Missing Links), social issues (KKK ads endorsing Sunday, his Women's Christian Temperance life membership certificate), life style (Arts and Crafts decorative pieces, extensive photos of the family's Mount Hood bungalow), and family relations (his personal possessions and those of his wife, Nell, and their children), In Rare Form brings together the inconsistencies between Sunday's material world and his spiritual world. Since Sunday might have objected to a materialistic analysis of his life, Firstenberger has allowed him a say: each section of the book begins with an apt quote from Sunday's sermons and writings. Firstenberger also includes appendixes providing detailed information on Sunday's revivals and speaking appearances, his 870,075 documented converts, the members of his evangelistic team, the overall structure of his family, and an extensive bibliography. Acknowledging Sunday's faults and contradictions alongside his heroic accomplishments, the author presents a wryly insightful and innovative perspective on this larger-than-life figure.

Integrating the Gridiron, devoted to exploring the racial politics of college athletics, examines the history of African Americans on predominantly white college football teams from the nineteenth century through today. Lane Demas compares the acceptance and treatment of black student athletes by presenting compelling case studies of those who integrated teams nationwide, and illuminates race relations in a number of regions, including the South, Midwest, West Coast, and Northeast.

The Journal of Sport History is published three times a year in spring, summer, and fall by the North American Society for Sport History. The purpose of the North American Society for Sport History is to promote, stimulate, and encourage study and research and writing of the history of sport, and to support and cooperate with local, national, and international organizations having the same purposes. The Society conducts its activities solely for scholarly and literary purposes and not for pecuniary profit.

The Journal of Sports Media is a response to the undeniable influence of sports media on contemporary culture and the growing interest in the field as an area of study and research. It provides a broad-based exploration of the field and promotes a greater understanding of sports media in terms of their practices, value, and effect on the culture as a whole. The journal features scholarly articles, essays, book reviews, and reports on major conferences and seminars. While the majority of the articles are academic in nature, it also includes articles from industry leaders and sports media figures on topics appealing to a nonacademic audience.

The rich slice of Americana found in minor league baseball presents a contradictory culture. On the one hand, the minors are filled with wholesome, family-friendly entertainment-fluffy mascots, kitschy promotions, and earnest young men signing autographs for wide-eyed Little Leaguers. On the other, they comprise a world of cutthroat competition in which a teammate's failure or injury can be the cause of quiet celebration and 90 percent of all players never play a single inning in the major leagues. In Knocking on Heaven's Door, award-winning sportswriter Marty Dobrow examines this double-edged culture by chronicling the lives of six minor leaguers-Brad Baker, Doug Clark, Manny Delcarmen, Randy Ruiz, Matt Torra, and Charlie Zink-all struggling to make their way to "The Show." What links them together, aside from their common goal, is that they are all represented by the same team of agents-Jim and Lisa Masteralexis and their partner Steve McKelvey-whose own aspirations parallel those of the players they represent. The story begins during spring training in 2005 and ends in the fall of 2008, followed by a brief epilogue that updates each player's fortunes through the 2009 season. Along the way Dobrow offers a revealing, intimate look at life in minor league baseball: the relentless tedium of its itinerant routines and daily rituals; the lure of performance-enhancing drugs as a means of gaining a competitive edge; the role of agents in negotiating each player's failures as well as his successes; and the influence of wives, girlfriends, and family members who have invested in the dream.

For at least a century, across the United States, Mexican American athletes have actively participated in community-based, interscholastic, and professional sports. The people of the ranchos and the barrios have used sport for recreation, leisure, and community bonding. Until now, though, relatively few historians have focused on the sports participation of Latinos, including the numerically preponderant Mexican Americans. This volume gathers an important collection of such studies, arranged in rough chronological order, spanning the period from the late 1920s through the present. They survey and analyze sporting experiences and organizations, as well as their impact on communal and individual lives. Contributions spotlight diverse fields of athletic endeavor: baseball, football, soccer, boxing, track, and softball. Mexican Americans and Sports contributes to the emerging understanding of the value of sport to minority populations in communities throughout the United States. Those interested in sports history will benefit from the book’s focus on under-studied Mexican American participation, and those interested in Mexican American history will welcome the insight into this aspect of the group’s social history.

In 1950, future Hall of Famer Earl Lloyd became the first African American to play in a National Basketball Association game. A warm and gracious man, widely loved and respected, Lloyd has lived what he describes as an "incredible journey" and has spent eighty years gathering passionate lessons from that experience. He was born in Virginia, a state he describes as "the cradle of segregation," only sixty-two years after the end of the Civil War. Nicknamed "Moonfixer" in college, Lloyd led West Virginia State to two CIAA Conference and Tournament Championships and was named All-American twice. One of three African Americans to enter the NBA at that time, Lloyd played seven games for the Washington Capitals before the team folded. He joined the Syracuse Nationals for six seasons and later played for the Detroit Pistons before he retired in 1961. Throughout his career, he quietly endured the overwhelming slights and exclusions that went with being black in America. Yet he has also lived to see basketball—a demonstration of art, power, and pride—become the black national pastime and to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama. In a series of extraordinary conversations with Sean Kirst, Lloyd reveals his fierce determination to succeed, his frustration with the plight of many young black men, and his sincere desire for the nation to achieve true equality among its citizens.