Established in 1883, the Olympic Club catered to a variety of pursuits from target shooting to billiards to boxing--the most popular sport in New Orleans, despite legal prohibitions. A revised city ordinance and a vague state statute permitting boxing sponsored by chartered athletic clubs were frequently tested at the Olympic, the epicenter of boxing in America. Between 1890 and 1894, the club's 10,000-seat arena hosted six world championship and seven national or regional title bouts. The 1892 Fistic Carnival featured three world title fights on three consecutive days, culminating in the World Heavyweight Championship between John L. Sullivan and James J. Corbett.

During the nineteenth century, New Orleans won and stoutly defended a reputation for amusement and dissipation that made it distinct among American cities. Exquisite cuisine, theaters, casinos, and private clubs attracted the affluent, while gambling dens, saloons, public ballrooms, cockfights, and ten-pin alleys drew the masses. In the antebellum period, organized sports were added to the numerous diversions already available. This book, on a neglected aspect of American social life, treats an important facet of Louisiana history and shows how the growth of cities contributed to the emergence of a leisure ethic. Professor Somers explains the reasons for the rapidly growing interest in sports, their impact on the city�s social and economic life, and their effect upon race relations and the emancipation of women. In the space of some fifty years sports, moved from a minor to a major role in the city�s play habits. By the turn of the century, sports played an unprecedented part in the daily lives of New Orleanians and thousands of other Americans.

Documents the ruin waiting for almost all those ill-advised enough to become professional boxers. The author confirms the legends, of crime, of swindling, of the miserable economic rewards allotted to the vast majority of fighters, and the traditional racism of the American ring.

Membership by Invitation is about Frank C. Gore’s career in the private club and golf industry. It spans a period of fifty-six years. Gore wrote it to help educate people in the industry, or others considering the private club industry as a career and how to grow a club. Gore chronicles the history of private clubs and how they have developed over the years. He tries to help younger generations understand the value of a private club and also educate consumers on some of the myths and misconceptions about the private club industry. Gore has visited 4,057 private city, country, golf, yacht, and athletic clubs including daily fee golf courses and golf resorts. He visited these venues in forty-eight states and thirty-five countries. About the Author Frank C. Gore is President of Gore Golf, clients include Pinehurst Resort and Country Club, North Carolina, and Craigsanquhar Sporting Club in Fife, Scotland. He is Chief Analyst for Distinguished Clubs LLC, Vice President of Development for Escalante Golf. He was Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Membership at ClubCorp 1978–2008; Chief Marketing Officer Eagle Golf 2010–2012; Executive Pastor The Grove Community Church 1992–1994 and 2013–2019; PGA of America member 1975–2008; Publisher of Private Clubs Magazine 1996–2006, and Chairman of Associate Clubs international 1997–2005.

I was born in Sydney Australia, educated at Borromeo, Holy Cross College and Malvina High School at Ryde. Boxing was a passion from a very early age that only an enthusiast would understand or appreciate. An involvement of over 50 years, at all levels from an amateur boxer to trainer and official. Married with three sons and one granddaughter, I am a part-time writer of short stories and record books. A martial artist in the Korean forms of Hapkido and Kumdo, obtaining Black Belt levels. Now semi retired I fi nd it important to give as much back as I have received from life, with gratitude.

Just a century ago Eddie Foy was the consummate stage comedian. A versatile performer, Foy contributed to the development of popular theater from the Civil War to the Roaring Twenties, from poverty-inspired Irish two-acts to lavish musical comedies. This first-ever biography of Foy tells the story of his indigent childhood in New York's Bowery and in Chicago, his tough uphill climb as a variety artist at Western outposts, his success in vaudeville and Broadway, and his arrival as a national icon with the Seven Little Foys. Foy's career mirrored the growth of popular theater entertainment in America. Exhaustively researched, this work contains many rare personal photographs from the Foy family archives.

“I can lick any son-of-a-bitch in the world.” So boasted John L. Sullivan, the first modern heavyweight boxing champion of the world, a man who was the gold standard of American sport for more than a decade, and the first athlete to earn more than a million dollars. He had a big ego, big mouth, and bigger appetites. His womanizing, drunken escapades, and chronic police-blotter presence were godsends to a burgeoning newspaper industry. The larger-than-life boxer embodied the American Dream for late nineteenth-century immigrants as he rose from Boston’s Irish working class to become the most recognizable man in the nation. In the process, the “Boston Strong Boy” transformed boxing from outlawed bare-knuckle fighting into the gloved spectacle we know today. Strong Boy tells the story of America’s first sports superstar, a self-made man who personified the power and excesses of the Gilded Age. Everywhere John L. Sullivan went, his fists backed up his bravado. Sullivan’s epic brawls, such as his 75-round bout against Jake Kilrain, and his cross-country barnstorming tour in which he literally challenged all of America to a fight are recounted in vivid detail, as are his battles outside the ring with a troubled marriage, wild weight and fitness fluctuations, and raging alcoholism. Strong Boy gives readers ringside seats to the colorful tale of one of the country’s first Irish-American heroes and the birth of the American sports media and the country’s celebrity obsession with athletes.