New Books in Sports

The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the
decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, sports
scholars, and everyday people have offered competing narratives about
the origins of modern sports in the late Ottoman Empire. In The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul (University
of Texas Press, 2026), Murat Cihan Yıldız tells the story of how
Istanbul’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews—gymnastics teachers, football
coaches, weightlifters, journalists, athletes, and fans—created a
gendered and class-stratified civic project that promoted athletics as a
source of fun, beauty, and moral education. Influenced by the emerging
global vogue for organized sports, all boys from the expanding middle
class of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial
capital were expected to exercise and compete on the playing field in
order to develop into moral men. Yet even as the embrace of modern
athletics transcended ethnoreligious divisions, it did not erase them.
Drawing on a wide range of archival research in multiple languages,
Yıldız shows that sportsmen created new communal boundaries in team
affiliations, fandom, and sports media. Adeptly reconstructing
Istanbul’s imperial culture as it was experienced more than a century
ago, The Ottoman World of Sports recovers a lived imperial
culture whose defining features were shaped by its multiethnic,
multireligious, and multilingual sportsmen.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Just how much damage is sport doing to the planet? In Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) Toby Miller, Profesor Distinguido at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico and Joan Pedro Carañana, Associate Professor of Journalism at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
examine the ecological impact of major sporting events. Using case
studies of The World Cup, The Olympics, The America’s Cup and Formula
One, the book demonstrates the vast range of economic, social, cultural
and climate impacts of these mega-events. Offering a wide ranging and
compelling critique, along with consideration of resistance to carbon
sports, the book is essential reading for everyone with interested in
whether global sporting spectacles can really be sustainable.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

On a crisp September afternoon in 1917, as the country waged war and the national pastime faced questions about its purpose, baseball paused to reconsider what it stood for. At Fenway Park, the game's greatest stars-many of them rivals, some near the end of their careers, others just emerging-took the field together in an exhibition played not for standings or championships, but for a colleague who had died, and for a cause larger than the game itself.

Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Connie Mack, and more. One newspaper called it "the greatest baseball show on earth."

What unfolded that day was more than a benefit or a curiosity. It was a moment of recognition among players, fans, and the sport's leaders that baseball could be something more than competition. It could be a shared stage. A public trust. A civic ritual capable of carrying the weight of a nation. Listen to our interview about One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game (Compass Rose, 2026)

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

There's more to sports than what occurs during games. Check your social media, listen to sports talk radio, or watch ESPN--there are daily stories of social issues in sports regarding concussions, playing hurt, gambling, Olympics and politics, athletes as social activists, paying college athletes, recruiting violations, academics, youth sports, diversity and gender issues, hazing, athletes' mental health, disabled athletes' rights, sportsmanship, and media coverage.

How do these issues affect athletes, fans, and society?

Written equally for casual and hardcore fans, Foul or Fair? Ethical and Social Issues in Sports (McFarland, 2024) analyzes social and ethical issues in sports in a lively, journalistic manner, combining quotes from writers, broadcasters, athletes, coaches and others with the author's observations. It shows pros and cons of how sports affect our daily lives and society. While sports inspire and excite us and lead to social change like the civil rights movement, Title IX, and rights of disabled people, controversies surrounding sports can be divisive even as sports work as a uniting factor in society.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and playWhen outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 1974, he brought with him a toy gorilla named Mighty Joe Young that became the team’s unofficial mascot for several players and many in the local press. This seemingly innocent stuffed animal was introduced within a baseball team notorious for its stubborn discrimination, and during a particularly fraught era of racial discord in Boston. That June, after years of activism from the city’s Black community, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that Boston must address the segregation of its schools through redistricting and busing. The ensuing racial animus to these policies led some of the city’s white residents to throw bananas and chant monkey sounds at African American students as they integrated the predominantly white South Boston High School. In this agitated atmosphere, cultural symbols like the Red Sox’s Mighty Joe Young mirrored and amplified the heightened racial tensions of Boston’s busing crisis.Situated at the intersection of US cultural and social history, Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation (U Massachusetts Press, 2026) examines the surprising ties in 1970s Boston between the racial segregation of the city’s schools and the racial controversies expressed on and off the field of “Red Sox Nation.” “I found out in the black community why they don’t come out [to Fenway Park],” explained Black player Reggie Smith of his experiences with the Red Sox and the city during this period. “The team was the last to get Black players, and some of the things I hear out in the stands make me sick.” To understand these connections, Faflik erases the lines between politics and sport, which routinely blurred in a city suffused with an anti-Black racism that was both deceptively subtle and fiercely overt.Drawing upon deep archival research from sources that have largely been ignored, such as the Black press of the time, Faflik offers a carefully nuanced portrait of Boston’s cultural life at a pivotal moment in the city’s history.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports