Sporting Cultures, 1650-1850 is a collection of essays that charts important developments in the study of sport in the eighteenth century.

In highlighting the crucial contributions of diasporic people to British cultural production, this important collection defamiliarizes prevailing descriptions of Romanticism as the expression of a national character or culture. The contributors approach the period from the perspective of the Atlantic maritime economy, making a strong case for viewing British Romanticism as the effect of myriad economic and cultural exchanges occurring throughout a circum-Atlantic world driven by an insatiable hunger for sugar and slaves. Typically taken for granted, the material contributions of slaves, sailors, and servants shaped Romanticism both in spite of and because of the severe conditions they experienced throughout the Atlantic world. The essays range from Sierra Leone to Jamaica to Nova Scotia to the metropole, examining not only the desperate circumstances of diasporic peoples but also the extraordinary force of their creativity and resistance. Of particular importance is the emergence of race as a category of identity, class, and containment. Race, Romanticism, and the Atlantic explores that process both economically and theoretically, showing how race ensures the persistence of servitude after abolition. At the same time, the collection never loses sight of the extraordinary contributions diasporic peoples made to British culture during the Romantic era.

The twelve essays in Romanticism/Judaica explore the four major cultural strands that have converged from the French Revolution to the present. The first section, Nationalism and Diasporeanism, contains essays on the diasporean mentality of the Romantics, Byron's attitude towards nationalism, and Polish immigrant Hyman Hurwitz's attempt to gain acceptance among the British by having Coleridge translate his Hebrew elegy for Princess Charlotte. Essays of the second section, Religion and Anti-Semitism, deal with the complexities of Jewish/Christian relations in the Romantic Period. Specifically, they discuss philosopher Solomon Maimon's lack of response to Kant's anti-Semitism, novelist Maria Polack's use of Christian subject matter to combat anti-Semitism, and short-story writer Grace Aguilar's incorporation of the British Bible-centered Evangelical culture, along with various strands of British Romanticism. In the third section, Individualism and Assimilationism, essays consider different ways the Jews were assimilated into the dominant culture, specifically through the theater, sports and and post-Enlightenment philosophy. Finally, the volume concludes with Criticism and Reflection: a revaluation of earlier scholarship on Anglo-Jewish literature; the establishment of Harold Fisch's covenantal hermeneutics as a model for reading Keats; and an analysis of Lionel Trilling, M. H. Abrams, Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman in terms of their Jewish origins, suggesting the further implications for Romanticism as a field.

Many books have discussed boxing in the ancient world, but this is the first to describe how boxing was reborn in the modern world. Modern boxing began in the Middle Ages in England as a criminal activity. It then became a sport supported by the kings and aristocracy. Later it was again outlawed and only in the 20th century has it become a sport popular around the world. This book describes how modern boxing began in England as an outgrowth of the native English sense of fair play. It demonstrates that boxing was the common man's alternative to the sword duel of honor, and argues that boxing and fair play helped Englishmen avoid the revolutions common to France, Italy and Germany during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. English enthusiasm for boxing largely drove out the pistol and sword duels from English society. And although boxing remains a brutal sport, it has made England one of the safest countries in the world. It also examines how the rituals of boxing developed: the meaning of the parade to the ring; the meaning of the ring itself; why only two men fight at one time; why the fighters shake hands before each fight; why a boxing match is called a prizefight; and why a knock-down does not end the bout. Its sources include material from medieval manuscripts, and its notes and bibliography are extensive.

Vaudeville is often viewed as the source of some of the crude stereotypes that positioned the Irish immigrant in America as the antithesis of native-born American citizens. Using primary archival material, Mooney argues that the vaudeville stage was an important venue in which an Irish-American identity was constructed, negotiated, and refined.