The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Sports & Recreation (review)

When I was asked to review this book I agreed out of my natural curiosity as an educator and researcher who teaches in the area of recreation and sport management. Needless to say, upon reading the book I found it to be a pleasant surprise. My inexperience with culture in the South inclusive of Alabama left me open to the informative capacity of each of the entries. Clearly, I discovered very quickly how much I did not know about leisure, recreation, sport, and culture that lay beyond the Ohio-Kentucky border.

This volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture is well organized with a purposeful yet informative introduction that helps acclimate the reader. The topical entries, which are organized alphabetically, are well written and robust enough to paint beautiful portraits of each activity in the mind of the reader. For example, I had no idea what noodling and ring shouts were, but after reading those entries I was even more fascinated. Even with the more common entries (such as baseball, basketball, fishing, football, soccer, stock car racing), the permeation of southern culture provides added dimension and value.

One of the positive attributes of this book is its organization and structure. The entries represent a wide range of sport and recreation pursuits. Typically when discussions ensue about leisure, recreation, and sport in the United States the conversation begins with a myopic point of view. Mainstream urban activities are at the top of the list while, almost as an aside, rural, resource-based, often slower-paced activities are casually brought into the conversation.

The editor is to be commended for selecting entries that represent the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the South. Without much effort, readers can find entries that are specific to the African American, Hispanic, and Native American cultural experiences. For example, the encyclopedia entries related to stepping and ring shouting are tied to African American culture, while events such as Quinceaneras and Mardi Gras acknowledge the Hispanic and multiethnic/multicultural heritages, respectively. The diversity of entries is a strong suit of this edition.

This volume is a great asset to the existing corpus of literature on southern culture. What often gets overlooked in the scholarly examination of regional popular culture are the small, simple trappings of daily living. Invariably this book can be used as a resource for educators, especially those who teach cultural studies, specialty courses that fall under the rubric of first-year studies, recreation and leisure studies, sport studies, and tourism. The book can easily be used as a supplemental text for undergraduate students, especially freshmen and sophomores. A second audience that would find this book interesting and delightful are those fascinated with experiencing the regionalized forms of leisure, recreation, and sport and who are immersed in southern culture. Those baby-boomers who have the time and discretionary income to travel to destinations because of their unique cultural and recreational opportunities can use this book as a resource guide.

Structurally, title pages placed between the introduction and the beginning of the activity-based entries and likewise between the end of those entries and the beginning of the biographical and place-based narratives would help the reader delineate the sectional breaks in the book. Even more helpful would be to break out those entries in the final section of the book. A subsection for place-based and people-oriented entries would allow for greater emphasis on the unique aspects of each.

Finally, there are a plethora of entries that help to paint a picture of a region where the pace is leisurely, the people are warm and neighborly, and whose family and friends are connected by activities that create a sense of community. There are a few entries missing that would help to paint a more holistic picture of the South. For example, there are a...