Customer Reviews

Sport in Industrial America 1850-1920 (American History Series)

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I once wrote a research paper in 1994 on the rise of professional baseball in the late nineteenth century. Everyone in my class was assigned a topic by the professor, and it just so happened that I was assigned not only a sports-related topic, but baseball no less (I'm a big baseball fan). As part of The American History Series, Sport In Industrial America 1850-1920 by Steven A. Riess was published in 1995. This book could have come in handy for my research paper a year earlier!

This book explores the rise and evolution of sports in industrial America between 1850 and 1920. Everything imaginable is covered - baseball, horse racing, boxing, school sports, the YMCA, middle class sports, upper class sports, working class sports, immigration, ethnicity, race, women, and so much more. I like reading about the early days of baseball, the days when pitchers would pitch every other day or they'd pitch a doubleheader, home runs were rare, games were low scoring, and the rules were different than today.

I highly recommend this book for both school and leisurely reading.

Interesting subject matter, but desperate for a journalist's touch. Not for the recreational reader.

Steven Riess's book, "Sport in Industrial America: 1850-1920," is an outstanding read. It complements Rader's book, "American Sport" From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sport," But leans, in my opinion, more on the youth of the time of the increase in public education at the end of the 19th Century, and most especially in the urban areas. Riess's work, as well as Rader's spends some time placing "Sport" in the context of the times and, in addition, takes the reader through the "periods" of what sport was all about (military, play, etc.) The parks movement, the mix of uban cultures, especially the Germans, the Czech's and the Poles give the reader an insight into the "gifts" various European cultures provided in American. In addition, I enjoyed his discussion of the role of radicalism in the German, Czech and Polish organizations that linked to picnics and quite obviously sporting games. Very readable and very enjoyable. Outstanding for the researcher as a basic intro to sport and class as well as the sports fan who would like to have a broader understanding of the background of various major sports in the United States (boxing, baseball, basketball, football), as well as track and field and cycling.