Today we are joined by Stephanie Convery, inequality editor at Guardian Australia, and author of After the Count: The Death of Davey Browne (Penguin Australia, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed the history of boxing in Australia, the failures that explain Davey Browne’s death in Sydney in 2015, the nature of violence in sport, and the future of boxing.In After the Count, Convery blends the genres of history, reportage, and memoir to explore the death of Davey Browne and shows how this one event illustrates the problems and lacunae inside of Australian men’s boxing. Convery writes from an insider’s perspective – she is a boxer – and her work does not condemn the sport for its brutality but rather asks questions about how to make boxing safer and how to make sure the sport of boxing remains meaningful for its participants. She concludes that some of the same toxic forces that gave boxing its allure now make it hard to regulate and threaten the lives of the people who participate in it.The book moves both chronologically and thematically as Convery shifts between a mix of traditional reporting, historical research, and experiential accounts of her own life in the ring. The beginning of the book is devoted to Davey Browne’s death and a significant portion of the end of the book contains Convery’s conclusions about the coronial case and in these places the book reads most like a traditional sports report.Some of the most interesting chapters feature her own boxing experiences and these are interspersed in the more chronological reporting. It is a minor spoiler that Convery suffers a concussion while reporting on the book and when she as she recovers, she dives into research on concussion and CTE. The ubiquity of head injury in boxing (and sports in general) shapes her discussion of the nature of violence. Boxing requires people to fight – to throw punches – and to improve as boxers those punches need to be real and be dangerous. At the same time, fighters need to consent to fight, need to understand the rules, and should have more information about head injury, how to avoid it, and what to do if they suffer from it.The book defies easy explanations – it’s considerate, even meditative; it swings from a report on Davey’s death in a Sydney club, to discussions of boxings seedy history in gambling dens, and to medical studies on the way to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Convery takes readers around the country - to the places in Davey Browne’s life, to gyms in Sydney and Melbourne where Convery practices, and finally to the coronial court where the people involved in the tragedy of Davey’s death face questioning from the government of New South Wales.It is a must read for people interested in boxing, Australian sport, and for people interested in the philosophical question of violence in sport.Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

On this episode, J. Daniel takes readers back more than forty years, telling a story that is part baseball history, part urban history, and part U.S. cultural history, with a narrative weaving together the develop­ment of the Midwestern cities of St. Louis and Milwaukee through their engagement with beer and baseball. In Suds Series: Baseball, Beer Wars, and the Summer of ’82 (University of Missouri Press, 2023), Daniel provides much more than a simple play-by-play of the season that was, highlighting the impact of the 1981 strike on free agency and player movement, offering an engaging snapshot of early ’80s pop culture and “hop culture,” and covering both the famous players and personalities—Rickey Henderson’s stolen bases, Reggie Jackson’s home run brigade, and the birth of Cal Ripken Jr.’s iron man streak—and tragic teams alike. Although the small-ball Cardinals would prevail over the “Wallbanging” Brewers in October of 1982 after seven thrilling games and a season of attrition, these two teams remain iconic in their home cities, and Daniel joined the New Books Network to discuss the intrigue and impact of 1982 as well as its enduring relevance to the current era, as baseball seeks a winning formula to recapture modern-day audiences.Jonathan “J.” Daniel has spent twenty years working in sports, both in front of and behind the camera. He produced five seasons of Rays Magazine, a weekly television show about the Tampa Bay Rays, and worked as a sports producer at Fox affiliates in Tampa and Chicago. He is the author of Phinally!: The Phillies, the Royals, and the 1980 Baseball Season That Almost Wasn’t (McFarland & Co., 2018) and blogs at https://www.80sbaseball.com.Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) is a professor of New Testament and typically hosts Biblical Studies conversations for the New Books Network, but occasionally covers topics of his normal beat as a hobbyist. In this case, he stepped up to the plate for New Books in Sports as a lifelong baseball fan, native St. Louisan, and one-time wannabe sportscaster. For more about Rob and his work, or to offer feedback related to this episode, please visit his website at https://www.robheaton.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

This book provides a rigorously researched introduction to the relationship between Christianity, race, and sport in the United States. Christianity, Race, and Sport (Routledge, 2021) examines how Protestant Christianity and race have interacted, often to the detriment of Black bodies, throughout the sporting world over the last century. Important sporting figures and case studies discussed include: the sanctification of baseball player Jackie Robinson; the domestication of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman; religious expressions of athletes in the NFL; treatment of African American tennis player Serena Williams; Colin Kaepernick and his prophetic voice. This accessible and conversational book is essential reading for undergraduate students approaching religion and race or religion and sport for the first time, as well as those working within the sociology of sport, sport studies, history of sport, or philosophy of sport.Jeffrey Scholes is associate professor of religious studies in the Department of Philosophy and the Director of the Center for Religious Diversity and Public Life at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, USA.This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Israel has one of the most extensive and highly developed hiking trail systems of any country in the world. Millions of hikers use the trails every year during holiday breaks, on mandatory school trips, and for recreational hikes. Shay Rabineau's Walking the Land: A History of Israeli Hiking Trails (Indiana UP, 2023) offers the first scholarly exploration of this unique trail system. Featuring more than ten thousand kilometers of trails, marked with hundreds of thousands of colored blazes, the trail system crisscrosses Israeli-controlled territory, from the country's farthest borders to its densest metropolitan areas. The thousand-kilometer Israel National Trail crosses the country from north to south. Hiking, trails, and the ubiquitous three-striped trail blazes appear everywhere in Israeli popular culture; they are the subjects of news articles, radio programs, television shows, best-selling novels, government debates, and even national security speeches. Yet the trail system is almost completely unknown to the millions of foreign tourists who visit every year and has been largely unstudied by scholars of Israel. Walking the Land explores the many ways that Israel's hiking trails are significant to its history, national identity, and conservation efforts.Christopher P. Davey is Visiting Assistant Professor at Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Today we are joined by Corry Cropper, a Professor of French at Brigham Young University, and one of two authors, alongside Seth Whidden, of Velocipedomania: A Cultural History of the Velocipede in France (Bucknell University Press, 2023). In our conversation we discussed the origin of the velocipede and how it illuminated the paradoxes of cultural life in Second Empire France.In Velocipedomania, Cropper and Whidden argue that a close examination of the velocipede and the discourse around it both highlight the complexities of class, gender and modernity in late Second Empire France but also prefigure the links between the Third Republic and the French bicycle craze of the late 19th century. Through a close look at a range of primary sources, mostly drawn from 1868-1869, and carefully translated and reproduced in whole in the text, they demonstrate that the velocipede was more than a passing fad. The velocipede was instead a vital symbol of French modernity and tradition, masculinity and femininity, practicality and fancy, and machine power and body power.The book contains four major sections. Each correspond to a different primary source or set of primary sources. The most significant of the texts is The Manual of the Velocipede, written by Richard Lesclide and illustrated by Emile Benassit. The Manual contains scientific articles, short stories, instructions on how to learn to ride a velocipede, and dozens of images that provided some of the earliest visual lexicons of bicycle riding. Cropper and Whidden reproduce complete translations of these sections, copies of the images, and unpack them in text and footnotes. Cropper and Whidden’s text and footnotes provide necessary context and compelling analysis; the sources can also be read alone and excerpted for teaching. Their discussion of the Manual for example focuses on a series of themes: the carnivalesque, the social classes of the Second Empire, gender difference, the erotic, and the modern and the traditional.Readers interested in the gender politics of velocipede riding will discover both the progressive and the retrograde. Cropper and Whidden show how the velocipede fad opened the door to sporting women who were able to use the machine to travel further than ever before but public decorum and sartorial conventions still limited the ways that women were able to ride.In a section called Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede, Cropper and Whidden solve a historical mystery. They identify the note’s author: a French naval officer de la Rue and velocipede enthusiast who invented the aquatic velocipede. De la Rue’s Note offered practical explanations for why the French state should invest in velocipedes, including the speed of telegraph delivery and the protection of the borders from smugglers. At the same time, he also emphasized the pleasure he derived from riding his cycle.In the second chapter, Cropper and Whidden sketch out the history of velocipedes on stage. They show how velocipedes rolled into French opera following the liberalization of the medium during the final years of the Second Empire. Their translated text, Dagobert and his Velocipede, remains a very entertaining read. Their translation is joke dense and readers will need to flip between the text and footnotes to understand their witty and pun filled translation.A final chapter examines velocipedes and poetry.Cropper and Whidden’s innovative approach to unpacking the history of the velocipede, which so successfully integrates translated primary sources, should be read by scholars interested in French history and sports history. It will also be very useful in classroom teaching.Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

When the 1997 college football season began, the once-mighty Michigan Wolverines were dismissed nationally as a relic of a bygone era. Michigan had posted four straight four-loss seasons and started out No. 14 in the polls for the third straight year, its worst preseason rankings since 1985. Michigan was led by an accidental third-year coach, Lloyd Carr, who had suffered through back-to-back four-loss seasons after taking the job in the middle of a proverbial tornado. The starting quarterback was a fifth-year, former walk-on who nearly quit the sport. The offensive and defensive coordinators were brand new, the schedule was the toughest in the country, and Michigan’s status as a football powerhouse teetered on a razor’s edge. Right before the opener, Carr’s team heard a survivor from a Mount Everest tragedy describe what it took to do the impossible, when everything around you was falling apart. Climb the mountain became the team’s mantra. Four months later, the Wolverines stood on college football’s summit as the 1997 national champion, a perfect 12-0. A team with several future Pro (and College) Football Hall of Famers, the first-ever defensive Heisman Trophy winner (Charles Woodson), the greatest QB in football history (Tom Brady) and the last QB to ever beat him for an open job (Brian Griese), the 1997 Wolverines reset the standard for greatness at the school with the most victories in the sport’s history. This is the story of climbing the mountain, individually and as a brotherhood, during Michigan’s most fabled season ― one ending with its first national championship in a half-century and lone title in the last 75 years. Nick Baumgardner and Mark Snyder's book Mountaintop: The Inside Story of Michigan's 1997 National Title Climb (Printopya, 2023) is the journey from the inside, from the players, coaches, and staff members who lived the experience.Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

The year 1972 is often hailed as an inflection point in the evolution of women's rights. Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that outlawed sex-based discrimination in education. Many Americans celebrate Title IX for having ushered in an era of expanded opportunity for women's athletics; yet fifty years after its passage, sex-based inequalities in college athletics remain the reality. James N. Druckman and Elizabeth A. Sharrow's book Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports (Cambridge UP, 2023) explains why. The book identifies institutional roadblocks - including sex-based segregation, androcentric organizational cultures, and overbearing market incentives - that undermine efforts to achieve systemic change. Drawing on surveys with student-athletes, athletic administrators, college coaches, members of the public, and fans of college sports, it highlights how institutions shape attitudes toward gender equity policy. It offers novel lessons not only for those interested in college sports but for everyone seeking to understand the barriers that any marginalized group faces in their quest for equality.Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) explores the history of organized baseball during the middle of the twentieth century, examining the sport on and off the field and contextualizing its development as both sport and business within the broader contours of American history. Steven P. Gietschier begins with the Great Depression, looking at how those years of economic turmoil shaped the sport and how baseball responded. Gietschier covers a then-burgeoning group of owners, players, and key figures--among them Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Hank Greenberg, Ford Frick, and several others--whose stories figure prominently in baseball's past and some of whom are still prominent in its collective consciousness.Combining narrative and analysis, Gietschier tells the game's history across more than three decades while simultaneously exploring its politics and economics, including, for example, how the game confronted and barely survived the United States' entry into World War II; how owners controlled their labor supply--the players; and how the business of baseball interacted with the federal government. He reveals how baseball handled the return to peacetime and the defining postwar decade, including the integration of the game, the demise of the Negro Leagues, the emergence of television, and the first efforts to move franchises and expand into new markets. Gietschier considers much of the work done by biographers, scholars, and baseball researchers to inform a new and current history of baseball in one of its more important and transformational periods.Steven P. Gietschier is an archival consultant for The Sporting News.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Baseball lore and history is filled with many valuable players, and not all of them are the Hall of Famers you know.In The One Hundred Most Important Players in Baseball History (Artemesia Publishing, 2023) Lincoln A. Mitchell highlights the one hundred players who have had the biggest impact on baseball, popular culture, and history through their careers inside or outside of baseball. You'll find stories about famous players like Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, but also lesser known but deeply impactful baseball players like Curt Flood, Hal Chase, and Felipe Alou. For over 120 years baseball has been a deep part of American life as folk culture and big business, but for just as long it has also been central to race relations, labor issues, global conflicts, and the songs of Bob Dylan. These one hundred players have influenced not only America's pastime but the country as well.Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Today we are joined by Dr. Karen Carr, Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of History at Portland State University and the author of Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming (Reaktion Books, 2022). Shifting Currents is the winner of the 2023 North American Society for Sports History Monograph Book Award. In our conversation, we discussed the historical, cultural, and geographic divisions between swimmers and non-swimmers; the reasons for the rise and fall of swimming in Northern Eurasia; and the racialization of swimming starting in the 13th century.In Shifting Currents, Carr offers a comprehensive history of swimming from the paleolithic to the present. Over four hundred pages, and with almost one hundred images, she illustrates how a centuries long divide developed between Northern Eurasian non-swimmers and the rest of the world, including Africa, the Americas and Australia, where people swam frequently and well. She argues that since the early Iron Age, Northern Eurasian people adopted and abandoned swimming several times but never really adapted to the water as a natural site for human social engagement and play that characterized indigenous swimming.This longstanding divide between swimmers and non-swimmers persisted not only because of the climate, but also due to long-stranding Northern Eurasian prejudices against getting in the water: namely that swimming was and is too dangerous, too improper with close connection to nudity and sex, too sacred since water was connected to the gods, and too foreign. These prejudices have surprising longevity and explain in part northern European practices such as the floating of witches, and the preference for the breaststroke.At the same time, as Carr points out, elite Northern Eurasians began during the Iron Age to swim and they continued to swim (with waxing and waning popularity) throughout the Middle Ages and into the present. While indigenous swimming was a lifestyle practiced across class and gender, in Northern Eurasia swimming was a shibboleth to status and wealth. At times it was central to elite status. As Plato claimed, a well-educated men could be identified because they knew how to read and how to swim and by the 19th century swimming became part of a well-rounded middle-class education. At other times, it was disfavoured: Carr argues convincingly that the Mongol invasions significantly undermined swimming’s importance among northern Eurasian elites.In the third and fourth sections of the book, “Still Swimming” and “Changing Places”, Carr shows how swimming became racialized and the damage that this racialization has done to indigenous swimming practices. African, American and Australian peoples were stronger swimmers than Europeans (who had largely forgotten how to do the crawl). Europeans viewed non-Europeans strength in the water as a sign of primitivity and used it as part of their justification for enslaving people in the global south. By the 19th century, European’s feelings about the water reversed and colonizers around the world now sought to bar people of color from swimming in the same places as white people. Carr ends on a declensionist note: Europeans and their settler-colonial descendants have largely succeeded in stamping out indigenous swimming around the world.Shifting Currents is a very compelling history of swimming that not only charts its development around the world but does so in a way that ties together its history with larger trends in global history. Written in a very readable style, full of handsome images, Shifting Currents should be read by scholars and non-schoalrs alike interested in swimming, sport more generally, and global histories that decentre the global North/West experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports