Elliott J. Gorn's The Manly Art not only told the story of a controversial sport's origins but also helped shape the ways historians write about American culture. The book expanded scholarly boundaries by exploring masculinity as an historical subject and by suggesting that social categories like gender, class, and ethnicity can be understood only in relation to each other. This updated edition of Gorn's highly influential history of the early prize rings features a new afterword, the author's meditation on the ways in which studies of sport, gender, and popular culture have changed in the quarter century since the book was first published. An up-to-date bibliography ensures that The Manly Art will remain a vital resource for a new generation.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for the first edition
'Gorn is an adventurous historian with a talent for informed speculation. He has written an exciting narrative history of boxing and then gone a step further to ask a series of questions that extend his focus to the whole of nineteenth-century American culture.' The Nation
'Gorn combines colorful, witty, powerful narrative with enormously sophisticated analytical rigor, and the result is a book that anyone remotely interested in America's nineteenth century should read.' Virginia Quarterly Review
'Gorn's finely conceived and craftsmanlike book catches the spirit of a young nation rushing to industrialization and how prize fighting was affected by, and came to reflect, much of the national mood and character. The Manly Art is first-rate social history rendered in felicitous prose.' Chicago Sun-Times
'The Manly Art is an important contribution to the study of nineteenth-century American culture. Writing with clarity, vigor, and grace, Gorn combines detailed narrative with convincing interpretations. He offers the reader a judicious selection of quotations from the sporting press that capture the drama, sensuality, and brutality of the ring and its craftsmen.' --The Journal of American History --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
'Gorn is an adventurous historian with a talent for informed speculation. He has written an exciting narrative history of boxing and then gone a step further to ask a series of questions that extend his focus to the whole of nineteenth-century American culture.' The Nation
'Gorn combines colorful, witty, powerful narrative with enormously sophisticated analytical rigor, and the result is a book that anyone remotely interested in America's nineteenth century should read.' Virginia Quarterly Review
'Gorn's finely conceived and craftsmanlike book catches the spirit of a young nation rushing to industrialization and how prize fighting was affected by, and came to reflect, much of the national mood and character. The Manly Art is first-rate social history rendered in felicitous prose.' Chicago Sun-Times
'The Manly Art is an important contribution to the study of nineteenth-century American culture. Writing with clarity, vigor, and grace, Gorn combines detailed narrative with convincing interpretations. He offers the reader a judicious selection of quotations from the sporting press that capture the drama, sensuality, and brutality of the ring and its craftsmen.' --The Journal of American History --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
About the Author
Elliott J. Gorn is Professor of History and American Civilization at Brown University. He is author of many books, including Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One and Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, and coauthor of A Brief History of American Sports.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Bible of the Early American Prize Ring,
This review is from: Manly Art (Paperback)
The most scholarly treatise of the early prize ring in America that has ever been written. Elliott Gorn picks up where Pierce Egan and Nat Fleischer left off as the premier chronicler of boxing's illustrious past. This book covers every facet of bare-knuckle prizefighting during the days when men such as "Yankee" Sullivan, John Morrissey, and John L. Sullivan ruled the ring. From "The First American Champions" and "The Meanings of Prizefighting" to "Triumph and Decline" and "The End of the Bare-Knuckle Era": this great work describes what boxing was really like when men fought to a finish and many fights were winner take all.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating History of 19th century Bare-Knuckled Fighting,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Hardcover)
This book not only reports on facts (likedates, fighters, places, etc.), but also on the whole milieu of bare-knuckled prize fighting. It helps to explain what would drive men to participate in a pastime that was both brutal and outlawed.
A great read for history buffs as well as boxing fans.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Manly Art is first rate.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Manly Art (Paperback)
This is an excellent, well researched piece that historians will enjoy. Lots of detail, all well placed in the context of the times.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
If Englishmen were apprehensive as a foreigner attempted to seize their championship, Americans should have been overjoyed by the efforts of Tom Molineaux to humble the old Mother Country. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, New Orleans, Yankee Sullivan, Spirit of the Times, Tom Hyer, Police Gazette, Old Smoke, John Morrissey, Richard Kyle Fox, Gilded Age, American Fistiana, Boston Boy, Mike Donovan, United States, Frank Queen, Pierce Egan, Crescent City, Harry Hill, New Jersey, William Poole, Empire Club, Long Point, San Francisco, George Kensett, Jake Kilrain New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
If Englishmen were apprehensive as a foreigner attempted to seize their championship, Americans should have been overjoyed by the efforts of Tom Molineaux to humble the old Mother Country. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, New Orleans, Yankee Sullivan, Spirit of the Times, Tom Hyer, Police Gazette, Old Smoke, John Morrissey, Richard Kyle Fox, Gilded Age, American Fistiana, Boston Boy, Mike Donovan, United States, Frank Queen, Pierce Egan, Crescent City, Harry Hill, New Jersey, William Poole, Empire Club, Long Point, San Francisco, George Kensett, Jake Kilrain New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
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81
books
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- The New American Sport History: Recent Approaches and Perspectives (Sport and Society) by S W. Pope on 7 pages
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