Takes you on a journey from the Olympic Games in Athens to the World Cup in Germany - via the Ashes series, the Ryder Cup, Wimbledon, and more. This book examines why sport holds us all in such thrall, how it uplifts and crushes us - and can seem to matter more than life itself.

In The Meaning of Sports, Michael Mandelbaum, a sports fan who is also one of the nation's preeminent foreign policy thinkers, examines America's century-long love affair with team sports. In keeping with his reputation for writing about big ideas in an illuminating and graceful way, he shows how sports respond to deep human needs; describes the ways in which baseball, football and basketball became national institutions and how they reached their present forms; and covers the evolution of rules, the rise and fall of the most successful teams, and the historical significance of the most famous and influential figures such as Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, and Michael Jordan. Whether he is writing about baseball as the agrarian game, football as similar to warfare, basketball as the embodiment of post-industrial society, or the moral havoc created by baseball's designated hitter rule, Mandelbaum applies the full force of his learning and wit to subjects about which so many Americans care passionately: the games they played in their youth and continue to follow as adults. By offering a fresh and unconventional perspective on these games, The Meaning of Sports makes for fascinating and rewarding reading both for fans and newcomers.

The Game of Our Lives is a masterly portrait of soccer and contemporary Britain. Soccer in the United Kingdom has evolved from a jaded, working-class tradition to a sport at the heart of popular culture, from an economic mess to a booming entertainment industry that has conquered the world. The changes in the game, David Goldblatt shows, uncannily mirror the evolution of British society. In the 1980s, soccer was described as a slum game played by slum people in slum stadiums. Such was the transformation over the following twenty-five years that novelists, politicians, poets, and bankers were all declaring their footballing loyalties. At one point, the Palace let it be known that the queen -- like her mother, Prince Harry, the chief rabbi, and the archbishop of Canterbury -- was an Arsenal fan. Soccer permeated the national life like little else, an atavistic survivor decked out in New Britain flash, a social democratic game in a cutthroat, profit-driven world. From the goals, to the players, to the managers, to the money, Goldblatt describes how the English Premier League (EPL) was forged in Margaret Thatcher's Britain by an alliance of the big clubs -- Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur -- the Football Association, and Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV. Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon traces the momentous economic, social, and political changes of post-Thatcherite Britain in a more illuminating manner than soccer, and The Game of Our Lives provides the definitive social history of the EPL -- the most popular soccer league in the world.

The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science and Medicine provides comprehensive and authoritative definitions of nearly 8000 sports science and sports medicine terms. All major areas are covered, including exercise psychology, sports nutrition, biomechanics, anatomy, sports sociology, training principles and techniques and sports injury and rehabilitation The dictionary will be an invaluable aid to students, coaches, athletes and anyone wanting instant access to the scientific principles, anatomical structures, and physiological, sociological and psychological processes that affect sporting performance. It will also be of interest to the general reader interested in sports science and medicine terminology.

Sport and Art explores relationship of sport to art. It does not argue that sport is one of the arts, but rather that sport and art hold common ground. Both are ways in which humans confront philosophical challenges, though they do this through very different media. While art deploys sensual media such as paint or sound, sport is the pursuit of a physical challenge at which the athlete may fail. This is to propose, in an argument that has its roots in Hegel’s aesthetics, that sport may be interpreted as a way of reflecting upon metaphysical and normative issues, such as the nature of human freedom, fate and chance, and even our sense of space and time. This argument is developed by proposing the concept of a ‘sportworld’, an ‘atmosphere of theory’ and a ‘knowledge of history’ through which an event is interpreted and thereby constituted as sport. Ultimately, Sport and Art argues that in order to be truly appreciated, sport must be understood within a modernist aesthetics. That is to say that sport is not about beauty, but rather about the struggle to find meaning in sporting triumph and crucially sporting failure. This book was published as a special issue of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

This text will give readers an understanding of and appreciation for the religious dimensions of sports.

"Sport is a vital part of our daily lives and culture, but it is also a multi-million pound industry; it plays an important role in the functioning of many communities, but it is also crucial for the international entertainment network. Andrew Blake examines the tensions between these different areas, arguing that the body should be placed at the centre of all sporting discourses." "A critical look at sport can illuminate a whole range of issues - identity and nationality, design, performance, representation and aesthetics - and all these are explored in this innovative book, which opens up a whole new area of research and cultural criticism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Despite the growing literature on spirituality and its positive impact on well-being in health psychology, education, occupational psychology and leisure studies, it has been less examined in sport studies. Meaning and Spirituality in Sport and Exercise: Psychological Perspectives examines the many forms of spirituality in sport from a psychological perspective, from moments of transcendence and finding deeper meaning and value to prayer before an important competition or in adversity, such as a career-threatening injury. Based on the latest research and the Nesti’s experience in applied sport psychology service delivery, this book covers a range of novel topics linking spirituality to athlete development, injury, exercise motivation, and ageing athletes, and offers applied, practical guidance for sport psychologists working with spiritual athletes. Offering a unique contribution to the study of spirituality in sport, and to sport psychology practice, this book is vital reading for any upper-level student or academic working in sport and exercise psychology, religion and sport, or the philosophy of sport, and any practising sport psychologist.