Encyclopedia of Sports in America: A History from Foot Races to Extreme Sports

摘要

This two-volume set is a historical compendium of the history of every sport imaginable in America from 1607 to the present. The author admits that there are a number of reference and scholarly works already available that detail the history of sports in American life and culture. This work is meant to be for the general reader, and is written to reflect that basic overview and context.rnContaining 13 chapters in all arranged chronologically, the first two chapters cover the settlement of the American colonists and their interests in sports from 1607 through 1860, and the Civil War to 1890. The broad range of these two early chapters is because of the rural nature of America in its infancy, and the fact that people had much less leisure time. Also, individual sports were more prevalent before the late nineteenth century, and team-oriented sports only began to develop in America in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The following ten chapters deal with one decade each, from the 1890s to 1989. Finally, the last chapter encompasses the time period 1990 to the present.