From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports

by Allen Guttmann

Overview

Originally published in 1978, From Ritual to Record was one of the first books to recognize the importance of sports as a lens on the fundamental structure of societies. In this reissue, Guttmann emphasizes the many ways that modern sports, dramatically different from the sports of previous eras, have profoundly shaped contemporary life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231517072
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	08/04/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Allen Guttmann is professor of American studies at Amherst College. His many books include The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games, Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism (Columbia), and a translation of Peter Kühnst's Sports: A Cultural History in the Mirror of Art. He lives in Leverett, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Play, Games, Contests, Sports
From Ritual to Record
Capitalism, Protestantism, and Modern Sport
Why Baseball Was Our National Game
The Fascination of Football
Individualism Reconsidered
Conclusion
Afterword. From Ritual to Record: A Retrospective Critique

What People are Saying About This

Richard D. Mandell

The most accomplished analyst and critic of sport of our age.

— Richard D. Mandell, author of Sport: A Cultural History

A. Bartlett Giamatti

[Guttmann is] our most distinguished contemporary thinker on the nature and role of sport in society.

— A. Bartlett Giamatti, late commissioner of baseball

Editorial Reviews

[Guttmann's] lucid, original, stimulating, blessedly jargon-free book does something to lighten our darkness. His pleasant, incisive style reflects a mind uncluttered by prejudice or ideology.

London Sunday Times - Brian Glanville

The chief advantage that Guttmann has over other sports theoreticians is a willingness to employ the techniques of modern rhetoric in creating some order out of the ideological confusion now swirling around his subject. He is a definer, a synthesizer, a causal analyst, as well as an arguer and a counter-arguer.

Virginia Quarterly

A pioneering work in a field remarkably little touched... For any future writer about the philosophy or the sociology of sport in general, this book will be required reading.

Times Literary Supplement - Julian Symons

[Guttmann's] lucid, original, stimulating, blessedly jargon-free book does something to lighten our darkness. His pleasant, incisive style reflects a mind uncluttered by prejudice or ideology.

— Brian Glanville

London Sunday Times

A pioneering work in a field remarkably little touched... For any future writer about the philosophy or the sociology of sport in general, this book will be required reading.

— Julian Symons

Times Literary Supplement