People's History of Sports in the United States: 250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play (New Press People's History)

I have long appreciated Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States since I was first exposed to it. I have also been an avid reader of Dave Zirin's columns and books, with its emphasis on sports and politics in America. Unfortunately, there is little relationship between the concept of a "people's history" and Zirin's account of sports. Moreover, while this is something of a history it is overwhelmingly focused on the post-World War II intersection of sports and politics, with something about class warfare but never quite enough. He emphasizes the 1960s and 1970s and discusses the icons of the era such as Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, and John Carlos and Tommie Smith.At some level this is more of a counter narrative to the dominant reverence for sports and sporting figures in the United States. It takes aims at the ruling elite in sports and their shortsightedness. There is quite a lot about labor relations, race relations, and other assorted divisive issues. This is a relatively straightforward short introduction to the subject, but there is little here that gets below a surface discussion. There is considerable overlap with what is contained in this book and what Zirin has to say about these same subjects in other books that he has written, especially "Bad Sports" (2010) and "Welcome to the Terrordome" (2007).This book is interesting, and certainly worth reading, but there are other issues that deserve serious consideration not covered here in any appropriate manner. These include subjects of class, ethnic identity, immigration, and the like. There is also considerably more to be delved into concerning the race and labor issues that Zirin does explore. As it is, this book is a useful introduction to a counter history of sports in America.

This work clearly shows that the world of sports cannot be divorced from other aspects of society, especially the world of politics. Sports reflects what is going on in our society, though sometimes in a subtle way. The inequities, biases, and prejudices that exist in our society do carry over into the sports world. In the world of sports we can see the unfair treatment of women, the enduring commercialization in our society, the persistence of racism, the selfishness and greed of certain athletes, the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, and the inordinate influence of the business class. It is not a surprise that our democratic failures as a country are reflected in our various sports activities. Ed Donato

As someone who has studied the politics of sports in the past, I was still able to learn a lot from this book. Zirin uncovers many underrecognized figures and events and sheds light on their role within the larger context of the time. Like other reviewers, there were a few things in the last couple chapters about the 1990s and 2000s that made me raise an eyebrow because he gave them greater importance than I'm aware of them really having or focused on less significant aspects - the one that stands out is focusing on the Williams sisters' dad rather than their own groundbreaking roles in tennis. Other than that, the structure of the book is straight-forward and Zirin's writing is distilled and easy, though obviously left-leaning.

This book brings everything you need into one, the people's history and sports. I grew up being a big sports fan (like most of us) and once I get into politics, I thought they were two separate things, but it is not! The author does an amazing job of bridging the gap and teaching us a real history that should be taught in all schools!

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it was The Washington Post who called David Zirin "the conscience of sport media". He tells you all the rest of the information that has been left out on the daily news feeds & sports talk shows for one reason or another; often the info you really should hear about. Mr. Zirin puts things into perspective & that is an understatement. If you want to be truly informed on sport, if you want to develop your opinions based on "the rest of the information" then read Zirin. Even if you find that from time to time you don't agree with him, you'll still have pertinent information to expand your sport knowledge base. Oh yes, and I recommend getting on his Edge of Sports email list.

Zirin is a compelling writer and does an effective job bringing to life the often tenuous yet important intersection of sports and politics. In addition to outlining this history, he does an astute job profiling activist athletes including stars such as Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Martina Navratilova and lesser known yet courageous athletes such as Abdul-Raouf and Craig Hodges. This is a must read for sports fans, social justice activists and anyone interested in history of sports and politics in the U.S.

I am a sports fan and someone who cares about the politics of social change. This book brought these worlds together in a way that has me rethinking how I understand both the history of sports and the history of the United States. Each story told might be worth its own book but I will take with me the stories of Moses Fleetwood Walker, the African American baseball player in the 19th century who saw his career die with the end of reconstruction, and the way the famed US women's soccer team threatened to strike in 1996 - on the advice of Billie Jean King - for equal pay. This is a must read - an antidote to the narrow politics of election season.

Zirin has educated me on the lives of athletes in America who have stood bravely against the tide of prejudice and greed. Athletes such as Tommie Smith,Jack Johnson, and Pat Tillman are Zirin's sample sizes in this book, that show how these athletes have sacrificed their reputations, livelihood, and even their lives, for their belief in the cause of justice.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in the city were left homeless. With no money to buy an escape, 30,000 people sheltered in the Louisiana Superdome - the largest dome structure in the Western Hemisphere and home to the New Orleans Saints, an American Football team.Yet those cooped up in the stadium were likely there for the first time: a ticket at the time cost $90 at the least, season tickets were going for $1,300 while a year in the corporate boxes would set you back more than $100,000.Katrina revealed the gaping holes in the armour of US capitalism, a world of huge inequalities that professional sport could not cover up.Dave Zirin's book attempts to address not only these modern contradictions, of sport as both a people's pastime and a plaything for the rich, but also chronicles the struggles that sport has exposed, ignored and often ignited.The chapters on the struggle for black rights, particularly those about the period before the late 1950s when the civil rights movement began to dominate on an international scale, are especially fascinating.Baseball, for example, had an unwritten but blatant colour barrier - an agreement that the professional Major Leagues would stay all-white - that was only broken in 1947, when the efforts of African-Americans in World War Two forced owners to begin to recognise that they too have `what it takes' to play professional sports. Even then, the transition was slow and extremely painful for the initial few players.Where Zirin succeeds though is not his chronicling of the breaking of the baseball colour barrier, an important event but one that has received plenty of coverage, in America at least, but instead his focus on events around it.The `Negro League' - a professional baseball league set up by the black baseball community with all-black players - was far more important to the black working class masses. In it were players from their background, people who they could relate to - heroes who sat at their end of the bus.Boxing was also a source of great pride and empowerment for the black masses, with Jack Johnson becoming the first black heavyweight champion in 1908, long before African-Americans had won many basic rights in the US. To the utter joy of the impoverished but growing black working class, Johnson beat the former champion, and white supremacist, Jim Jeferees - a victory that sparked race riots in almost every town and city, creating mass racial uprisings.Plenty of other stories in Zirin's book also highlight the role that sports stars, given a voice and a platform similar only to actors and musicians, can play in exposing serious political issues.Many stood out in the anti-Vietnam war protests, perhaps most famously - and, in terms of his global reach, effectively - boxer Muhammad Ali. He openly refused to be conscripted early on in the war, before the anti-war movement was at its peak, and took jail and expulsion over a cushy, non-military role. His stand was front page news, sparking celebrations over the refusal to fight in an horrific war.Yet, like many of the other heroes in the book, Ali's legacy was later somewhat tarred and he is undoubtedly a flawed idol. Zirin unfortunately does not go far enough in explaining the down side of having sporting figures, or pin-ups of any other type, held up as the saviour for any given situation. It not only ignores the role of the mass movement that supports any successful campaign, but it puts enormous pressure on a single person to live up to the expectations of sometimes millions of people.Having an icon for a movement can also allow the ruling class, if they can win over that individual, to hold him or her aloft as proof that they too were part of that movement - or use the person, who can access an audience they can't, to promote their aims and policies.Although Zirin doesn't explicitly state these flaws, his book does a good job of reinforcing the problems behind the idolisation of sporting stars.In an excellent chapter on the protests around the 1968 Olympics - also well documented in the BBC4 program `Black Fist Salute' - he explains the role of sprinter Jesse Owens, who won gold at the 1936 `Hitler' Olympics in Berlin.Owens was persuaded by the hated head of the US Olympic Committee, Nazi sympathiser Avery Brudage, to tell the Olympic rebels that their stand was wrong and that the protest had to end. He was shouted out of the room by the athletes, who saw through the plan, but his public condemnation of them - in which he was joined by the other famous black gold medallist of 1936, boxer Joe Lewis - must have had an impact on the public's perception of the protest back in the States.Major League Baseball's first black player, Jackie Robinson, played a similar and in many ways more effective role in the anti-communist witchunts of the 1950s, testifying in trial against African-American activist Paul Robeson.Looking more recently Zirin exposes the ignorance of sporting heroes such as basketball star Michael Jordan who, when asked why he didn't support a black Democratic candidate standing against racist Republican Jesse Helms, said: "Republicans buy sneaker too."It's not just in the creation of dubious role models where sport has played a negative role in working class movements. Zirin's book exposes its use in `preparing' men for the First World War, in providing a proxy cold war that saw athletes pumped with dangerous drugs and in using American Football games as cheerleaders for the Vietnam War.With the book's focus on the role of athletes in politics it does, despite the title, gloss over and underestimate the role of the working class. He only fleetingly mentions the Russian revolution, the various uprisings of 1968, the international movement against the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. Yet these events, especially the 1917 Russian revolution, were crucial to giving confidence and inspiration to the American working class and helped politicise the athletes of the time.His focus on the US also ignores the many important roles sport has played internationally. Cricket, to take just one sport not touched on in the book, has been for decades a metaphorical weapon against colonialism for the masses of India, Pakistan, the West Indies and other countries.Marxist writer and activist CLR James understood its importance and his autobiography `Beyond a Boundary' digs into the role cricket played, encapsulating the frustrations and injustice that he and many of his fellow Trinidadians saw in colonialism.Zirin's book also suffers from a lack of writing on more recent issues - an absence Zirin puts down to a decline of politics mixing with sport.Yet followers of football in Europe will know that some matches, particularly in Spain and Eastern Europe, have become a battleground for the far-right, with fascist organisations attempting to use matches as rallies. This came to a head in 2005 when Italian club Lazio, who are infamous for their large group of largely fascist `Ultra' fans, played Livorno - the birthplace of the Italian Communist Party and a city where communist and socialist ideas have to some extent held firm.Former Sheffield Wednesday and West Ham forward Paolo Di Canio, who effectively `came out' as a fascist sympathiser after he moved from England to Lazio, gave the fascist salute to his fans after scoring against Livorno. It sparked a debate about football and politics in Italy which last re-appeared in the English press in 2008 when AC Milan goalkeeper Christian Abbiati publicly revealed his fascist leanings.The comparative lack of publicity around former Livorno star Cristiano Lucarelli, who has continually spoken of his support for communism, shows the need for a book like Zirin's to be written about sport in Europe.In a society where divisions were, and still are, fostered by the ruling class to polarise the masses, sport has played an historic role on both sides of the struggle. Zirin's book is required reading for anyone interested in, or doubtful of, the importance of sport to the working class and our mass movements.