Mark Dyreson, Making the American Team. Sport, Culture and the Olympic Experience, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1998, Pp. 269. US$ 18.95. ISBN 0-252-06654-5.

American sport is familiar to us all, but manages at the same time to be distant, remote and in many ways a closed book. American football, baseball and basketball are sports that have never featured in the British mainstream, yet have a familiarity and represent the very essence of the American nation. What is more recognisable, and instantly more understandable is the presence of the American team at the Olympics. The Americans take their place in a common sporting festival and compete on supposedly equal terms with nations such as Great Britain. In the post 1945 period, and certainly through the Cold War, the American presence at the Olympics signified much more than a sporting nation. Here was a world power; the nuclear leader and self appointed bastion of democracy. Their athletes appeared better trained, better dressed and consistently won the majority of medals. For the Americans the Olympics seemed to be part and parcel of an aggressive sporting diplomacy; an ability to prove themselves superior to, and stronger than any other nation in the world on a four year cycle. With the development of the IOC's openly commercial agenda in the wake of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the Americans also came to symbolise the seemingly rampant capitalism that now accompanies the modern day product of de Coubertin's dreams. American athletes at the Olympics are representative of many simplistic and snapshot images of the United States: flash, brash, self indulgent and arrogantly superior. Competing wholeheartedly for the pride of their nation, yet also having one eye on the wealth and glamour available from such a victory.

Mark Dyreson's book examines the early years of the Olympics, from Athens in 1896 to Stockholm in 1912. In doing so he explores how the Olympics were used as a vehicle for the creation and promotion of an American team that would represent an American Republic. By mirroring such a Republic the American Olympic team was supposed to create a common point of reference for all members of the nation, thereby bringing about a shared purpose for all. Dyreson's thesis is that there existed, at the end of the nineteenth century, a critical mass of American thinkers who believed that sport was a tool which would combat the degenerative effects of modernisation and reinvigorate American democracy and egalitarianism. Dyreson argues that such thinkers, headed by the philosopher William James, saw sport as a form of technology that functioned as a powerful mechanism for the transferral of value and virtue (team spirit, fair play and so on). The strength of sport as an agency for the transmission of positive values was reinforced by the presence of a national and increasingly powerful print media that both generated and then fed the American passion for sport.

Dyreson is well placed to write about this whole period having written a wide range of articles on the early Olympics and American culture in journals such as Olympika and The Journal of Sport History. The main body of the book is also a partial product of his doctoral thesis written in the late 1980s, but a long-term gestation and reworking of his ideas has paid dividends so that this book does not read like the classic reprinted thesis. His specific expertise on American involvement in the Olympics is underpinned throughout the book by a clear understanding of American history and politics at a multitude of levels. One of the book's major strengths is that all the different levels of American society are contained within, be they intellectual elites, politicians, sportspeople or the `common' man who consumed the activities of the athlete and in doing so imbued themselves with the intellectual mission of the Sporting Republic.

The whole book is awash with a mass of intricate detail that is obviously the product of a huge amount of archival research. The spirit of the period from the 1890s to the outbreak of World War One is well created, and the political and intellectual need to reinvigorate the US around a common goal well explored. Each chapter of the book is based around a specific Olympic Games and they detail the American involvement with the Games, the relationship between US Olympic officials and those of the Olympic movement led by de Coubertin and how each Games was perceived `back home' in the context of the creation of a Sporting Republic. While an excellent history of US involvement in the Olympics and of the political use of sport, Dyreson pushes his central thesis by implication, rather than by sustained investigation. Only in the last two chapters does he really draw together many of the themes and ideas which come to light through the text. The book makes an excellent addition to the wealth of Olympic literature, most notably the historically based works of Guttmann, and also draws on the multitude of American themes within the Games. Importantly it demonstrates the political use of sport in America, and in doing so complements the recent work of Steve Pope. On reading the book, one realises that the modern myths of American sport, particularly at the Olympic level, need serious revision with respect of the turn of the century.

Mike Cronin,

International Centre for Sports History and Culture,

De Montfort University.

Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome, London and New York: Routledge, 1998, Pp. xx + 288, ISBN 0-415-09678-2

Anyone who has ever pondered the origins of sport will have thought about the enigma of the extravagant violence featured widely in the circus spectacles of ancient Rome. The question of why both the rulers and the ruled of the Roman Empire were devotedly attached to some of the most abhorrent forms of cruelty has often been raised. For more than two hundred years, historians and anthropologists have contemplated this conundrum. During the last ten years alone, almost a dozen or so new monographs have tried to shed more light on the Gladiator culture of ancient Rome. Despite countless endeavours, hardly anyone has been able to elucidate convincingly the origins or indeed the mysterious significance Gladiator contests held for Roman people. In fact, each new assault on the Gladiator riddle is confronted with the same undeciphered issues.

Donald G. Kyle, Professor of history at the University of Texas, is widely known as one of the leading experts of ancient sport. His books on Athletics in Ancient Athens (1987) the Essays on Sport History and Sport Mythology (1990), which he co-edited, in addition to numerous papers on Greco-Roman sports have made him an authority in this field of research. He is ideally qualified to raise the conundrum of the Roman Spectacles of Death yet again. Readers should not, however, expect to find in Kyle's latest book a comprehensive explanation of these puzzles _ in spite of his attempt to produce his own hypotheses. Instead, we can count on Kyle to have written one of the best researched studies of ancient gladiator sports to have appeared in recent years.

From the outset, Kyle confronts the problem of ancient blood sport head-on. What is particularly commendable in this respect is his wide-ranging review of the scientific literature on combat rituals, blood sacrifice and sanctioned violence both in the context of sport and religious custom. Readers interested in recent and current research on these issues in the area of both ancient historiography and social anthropology are rewarded with a multitude of essential references. Not surprisingly, Kyle is not content with solely reviewing the old, often out-dated, or the fresh, mostly speculative, research and conjectures. He has come up with his own attempt to solve at least part of the ancient riddle himself.

The historical roots of Roman gladiator contests are lost in the mist of mythological accounts. What seem increasingly clear is that the early forms of these endorsed combats go back to ritualised human sacrifices that, most likely, took place in form of deadly contests. Kyle discusses at great length the legendary and historical sources that deal with human sacrifices and assesses the controversial issue in the context of historical periods that are better known and understood than Roman prehistory. Given the limited focus on Roman antiquity, it would be imprudent to hope for a comprehensive study of human sacrifice in the same book. And yet it would appear that no undertaking that endeavours to reconstruct the origin and dynamics of gladiator combats will succeed without an understanding of why, at some stage in societal evolution, humans began to ritually kill others as integral part of their world view. It is obvious that a full understanding of Roman spectacles and Gladiator contests will ultimately depend on the deciphering of human sacrifice.

This observation is also true for another phenomenon of the Roman gladiator contests: discussing recent research findings, Kyle points out that the punishment of criminals in Roman arenas was often staged in a dramatic context. According to ancient authors, criminals were sometimes executed in form of public re-enactment of mythologies: these criminals appeared disguised as gods and took on their tragic role in such violent performances. As Kyle points out, "crowds laughed as an Attis was castrated or a Hercules was burned to death". Regrettably, he does not follow up this promising path. Consequently, the questions as to why the re-enactment of mythological themes became part of Roman spectacles, and, perhaps even more important, how these violent myths and legends were fundamentally connected to similarly violent rituals, are left unanswered.

Kyle shifts his focus instead to the fact that many more animals were killed in arenas and circuses than humans. It is this context that the author formulates his most original contributions to the debate about the function of the Roman arenas. In essence, Kyle suggests that the historical spectacles were rooted in prehistoric hunting. Following Walter Burkert's hunting-hypothesis of ancient Greek sport, Kyle asserts that the same hypothesis holds true for Roman spectacles. In his view, the spectacles were institutionalised and artificial forms of hunting that emerged at a time when agriculture and urbanisation replaced hunting as the principal form of subsistence. There can be little doubt that many features of the spectacles, particular those that included animal contests, had strong associations with hunting. Nevertheless, the hunting-hypothesis is far from being a convincing answer. Most importantly, it fails to explain why the Gladiator culture and all that goes with it appeared rather late on the stage of Roman history, many thousands of years after sedentarisation, agriculture and the domestication of animals has replaced the hunter-gatherers. Had changing hunting practices anything to do with the sudden emergence of institutionalised gladiator and animal contests, one would expect to find their beginnings many thousands of years earlier. Their historical origins, however, can only be detected during the first millennium BC _ not earlier. It is this historical context that requires elucidation. The evolutionary approach, on the other hand, on which the hunting-hypothesis of Greek and Roman sports rests, is not based on any factual evidence.

One does not need to agree with Kyle's own theories in order to acknowledge that he has produced a splendid and thought-provoking new book on a venerable problem. Although many, if not most of the questions about the origins of the Spectacles of Death remain open for the time being, his book has certainly stimulated new interest and has raised new questions about the darker side of sport and the history of sport.

Benny Peiser

Liverpool John Moores University

Robin Lester, Stagg's University: The Rise, Decline and Fall of Big Time Football at Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Illini Books edition, 1999, Pp. 301 U.S. $13.95 (paperback) ISBN 0-252-06791-6.

Robin Lester has a good, dramatic tale to tell, as his title indicates, and he tells it well. Although the decision of the Trustees of the University to support President Hutchins' argument that football should be abandoned at Chicago is a well known incident for those interested in American educational and sports history (quite apart from generations of Midway alumni), Lester's book is much the most detailed discussion we have. The University of Chicago had been a great power in American College Football, it ceased to be so and gave up the game. Other institutions of education in the States have given up or downgraded football, but none with Chicago's impressive footballing history.

At the heart of most, if not all, of this story is Amos Alonzo Stagg, the most notable of Walter Camp's protegés from Yale, who was the Maroon's first coach and continued in that role until his reluctant retirement at seventy. Indeed, he then went on to a successful career in a previously obscure Californian College until he was eighty-four. He last coached a high school team when he was ninety-seven, and his hundredth birthday was a nationally noted event. All this when Stagg had been known as the "Old Man" at Chicago since his forties!

The man who appointed Stagg was William Rainey Harper. Harper from the Divinity School at Yale knew Stagg, who had briefly considered a career in the ministry, well, and made him a tenured faculty member as Athletics Director at the new institution backed by Harper's fellow Baptist, John D. Rockefeller. Stagg had also worked at the Y.M.C.A. College at Springfield Mass., and he was a friend of James Naismith. Part of Lester's story, then, is very much that of one of the Founding Figures in Modern American Sport. One particular, but not unique twist, is that Stagg could have had a career as a professional baseball player, but deliberately chose to become a professional college coach. As already indicated, Stagg had an impressive job description at Chicago, but coaching football, and to a lesser extent basketball and track and field (he was involved with the American athletes at the Paris Olympics of 1924), was his main task. For the most part, despite periodic worries, Harper and his successors as President supported him. Stagg tended to be both sensitive and authoritarian but for most of his career his success was seen as inseparable from the success and positive popular image of the new University. With extraordinary speed, Chicago became a major American University with a college within it producing some outstanding football teams and, in the case of Walter Eckersall, one of the most gifted of all College Football Players.

Eckersall struggled with his studies and had eligibility problems. During the thirties an able new coach, Clark Shaugnessy, found that more and more of his players were struggling with Chicago's high academic demands, although their last exceptional player Jay Berwanger did not. With his refusal to take up the game professionally and his insistence on following a quite different career upon graduation, Berwanger could be seen to represent older College Football values.

What those values were is at the heart of this book, which those familiar with the contrasting work of R.A. Smith and S.W. Pope will find unsurprising. In the end, yet another Yale man, the young, cocky and often dazzling Robert Maynard Hutchins felt that what was necessary for a winning college football team was hostile to what he wished his University to be. What had been Harper's University, then, according to Lester, became Stagg's University became Hutchins' University. It was to be a high achieving very academically focussed institution with high levels of involvement in participatory sports. Sports historians are likely to have mixed feelings about this outcome as, it seems to his reviewer, does Robin Lester, himself a graduate of the University of St. Andrews. Ambivalence is increased by noting what happened under the now decaying west stands at Stagg Field on December 2, 1942. As one of Lester's illustrations reminds us, it was here that Enrico Fermi and his colleagues achieved the first self-sustaining chain reaction which was to lead to an effective atomic bomb.

S.J.S. Ickringill

University of Ulster

Andrew Moore, The Mighty Bears! A Social History of North Sydney Rugby League, Macmillan, Sydney, 1996, Pp. 592. ISBN 0 7329 0869 8.

Histories of sports clubs are notoriously difficult to write. Finding a balance between the dry facts of administrative quotidian and the often intangible bonds between a club and its community is a task which has proved elusive even to the best historians.

But not for Andrew Moore. His history of North Sydney rugby league club is a superb piece of work which combines academic rigour with the passion of a lifelong fan. It is more than a history of a club; by seeking to explain the history of Norths it is also a history of the North Sydney area itself.

At its heart is the question of why North Sydney have only ever won two premierships in almost ninety years of existence. In a sense this question is the lodestar of all club histories - if one could uncover the reasons for the Yankees' dynasty in baseball, Liverpool's in soccer or St George's in rugby league the secret of sporting success would be unlocked.

But The Mighty Bears! looks at the question from the perspective of the unsuccessful majority of clubs. And few rugby league clubs have been more conspicuously unsuccessful than North Sydney, with just two premiership wins, in 1921 and 1922, in ninety years of existence. Andrew Moore's explanation for Norths' failures links the weaknesses of the club to the decline of the working class community in the North Sydney area.

The construction of Sydney Harbour Bridge in the 1920s - the building of which cost Norths, Hull and Australian centre Jimmy Devereux an amputated leg, for which he received £50 compensation - and the Warringah Expressway in the 1960s both helped to seriously undermine North Sydney as a residential district, fatally eroding the working class community which had developed there in the decades preceding World War One and turning the area into a commercial and business services centre. The club was further undermined after World War Two when the neighbouring Manly-Warringah rugby league district was given a place in the Sydney premiership, thus restricting the club's pool of available players and spectators, not to mention establishing a deadly rival a few miles away.

Lacking the income from large crowds, the players from a large junior competition and the self-confidence which comes from success, Norths became the epitome of the eternal losers, the butt of jokes and the raw material for works by, among others, Australian playwright, and Norths fan, Alex Buzo.

Ironically, their most successful period since the 1920s came in the early 1990s, when North Sydney had become a haven for yuppies and Sydney rugby league suddenly became fashionable among all classes. This seems to contradict Moore's thesis, yet in reality it confirms it - the decline of North Sydney's working class community impoverished the club, but in the 1990s the money with which to build a successful side came from the sponsorships and corporate involvement made possible by the area's affluence.

But if the failure of Norths is the thread which runs through the book, Moore weaves a rich tapestry around it, exploring topics which have hitherto been largely undiscussed in rugby league. Among other issues, he looks at the links between organised labour and Australian rugby league, argues that the social conditions of 1930s brought a great increase in violent play into the game, presents the first serious examination of the impact of the New South Wales `poker machine revolution' on rugby league and dissects the racist undertones in Roy Francis' short stint as coach of the side from 1969 to 1971.

It is often the case that club histories lack balance, focusing too much either on the club's origins or, more usually, its recent past. `The Mighty Bears' maintains its narrative drive throughout being as interesting and engaging in dealing with the rock bottom days of the 1970s as it is in discussing the balmy years of the early 1920s.

As well as astute analysis, the text is peopled by interviews with, and reminiscences of, the personalities who carry with them the memories and culture which make the club a living organism. There even bit-parts for unexpected characters such as DH Lawrence and Dr HV Evatt, Australian Labour Party leader during the Cold War.

It seems churlish to point out errors in such a richly researched work but the 1914 `Rorke's Drift' test match took place in Sydney, not Melbourne (which is actually where the British management wanted it played), and Broughton's rugby league side was the Rangers, not the Rovers. One could also argue that the section on Norths Leagues Club is a little too detailed for all but the most ardent Norths devotee.

As well as being expertly written, the book itself is excellently produced. It is evocatively illustrated and includes an exhaustive season by season statistical review by David Middleton. Mention should also be made of its first-class index, a feature too often overlooked in the rush to publish.

This is an important work, both as a social history of the club and the locality. More than that, it is an important contribution to the history of rugby league and of Australian sport in general and should serve as a model for future works on the histories of sports teams and their communities.

Indeed, such is its achievement, that only the cruellest reviewer - or a Manly supporter - would suggest that, in writing The Mighty Bears, Andrew Moore has been somewhat more successful in his endeavours than his beloved Bears.

Tony Collins

International Centre for Sports History and Culture

DeMontfort University

Postscript

The North Sydney Rugby League Club recently went into liquidation.

Maurice Roche (ed.), Sport, Popular Culture and Identity, Aachen, Meyer & Meyer Verlag, 1998, Pp. xiii +224. £12.95. ISBN 3-89124-468-1

This book is the fifth volume of a series of edited works emanating from the Chelsea School Research Centre at the University of Brighton. All the earlier volumes concentrated, as does this one, solely on aspects of sport in the broad historical and contemporary context. The majority of the chapters in the book were first aired at a conference in Paris in 1996 that focused on issues of Collective Identity and Symbolic Representation. In the book itself, identity is clearly the unifying theme between the nine essays. The issue of popular culture is, with the exception of the introduction, little explored. It appears that sport is, by its nature a component of popular culture, and thus further interrogation of the term, or indeed of the wider theme, is superfluous. This is disappointing, as sport should not be presumed to be a central part of popular culture solely as we are contemporarily existing in the days of mass television coverage. Notions of popular culture have historically shifted and have never remained monolithically static. The theme of popular culture should have been further investigated from a wider historical perspective. History, or historical perspectives, are not, however, a key part of this collection. The main focus is contemporary or recent events, and the central mode of assessing these events is through the eyes of the sociologist. That is not to dismiss the chapters, as the majority of them make an important contribution to our knowledge, are highly readable and have been well edited.

The book is sub-divided into three major sections that deal with sports media and identity, sport policy and urban identities and sport and identity more generally. All the chapters are written by well respected authors, and all of them are writing on themes that are familiar to them. The first section in the book is by far the most coherent. Garry Whannel discusses how the media promotes (and sometimes denigrates) sports stars, and the effect that such high profile construction of the `star' has on our sense of collective identity. Put simply, is Britain, or more often its component parts, represented by a single sports star? Is Bobby Moore more representative of English characteristics than Nick Faldo? The thesis that Whannel presents is fascinating, and is one that should be pursued further, especially within the historical context. Neil Blain and Hugh O'Donnell's chapter returns to the theme of their 1993 book that examined the links between sport, national identity and the media in Europe. The chapter, in analysing press coverage of the 1996 European Football Championships held in England, suggests that while the British press still clings doggedly to certain prejudices and stereotypes with respect of `foreign' teams, there have been some positive developments. They conclude, quite correctly, that the advent of the Premier League and Sky television led to the creation of sport supplements in most British newspapers that rely on good quality sports journalism, rather than xenophobic jingoism to inform and entertain their readers. While Blain and O'Donnell see some positive aspects within the explosion of media sports coverage in the 1990s, John Arundel and Maurice Roche, in assessing the relationship between Rugby League and television, are more wary. They suggest that the development of the relationship between Sky television and the Rugby League has challenged the whole nature of the games strength: local ties and community identification with teams. Previous media deals made by the Rugby League, such as that with the BBC (so memorably encapsulated by the commentary of Eddie Waring), may have sustained a degree of parochialism within the game and its following, but it did not open it up to the ravages of the global market place in the way that the Murdoch-Sky deal of the 1990s has. The sections on the links between sports media and identity, while predominantly based on coverage of the 1990s, open up a gold mine of possibilities for sports historians. Work on the links between the media and the evolution and continuation of collective identities within the history of sport is badly needed.

The second section deals with sports policies and identity and focuses on the effect of sport on three cities: Sydney, Lyon and Sheffield. Michael Hall and Julie Hodges explain how the Sydney Olympics have carefully developed an ideal of an Australian identity that is meant to appeal to the thousands that are expected to travel to the Games. They argue that the creation of such an image, and all the short-term infrastructure that is needed for a `mega-event' such as the Olympic games, deflects planners away from longer term goals of developing cities. Perhaps it is the job of the Olympic historian to test such a thesis against host cities of the past. The chapters on Lyon (by Ian Henry) and Sheffield (Alan France and Maurice Roche) make for interesting comparative reading. Henry argues that while French society has witnessed a decline in the central control of sports facilities, cities and regions have continued their maintenance and development so that, as in Lyon, sports provision remains of central importance to the sense of city cohesion and identity. By comparison, the decision of Sheffield to bid for and host the World Student Games is seen by France and Roche as a strategy that was risky and the positive benefits emerging as uncertain. Identity, it appears from the two chapters, is better cemented by local provision for local people, rather than the pursuit of `mega-events'.

The rationale holding together the papers in the final section is not as clear cut as those earlier in the collection. The actual chapters are well written and contain much that is useful. John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson chart the differences that exist within different football cultures. Specific attention is paid to Northern Ireland, South Africa and the US World Cup of 1994. Steve Greenfield and Guy Osborn's chapter is drawn from their ongoing work on the legal regulation of sport and its effect on notions of identity. The focus here is the 1990s and the rapid changes that have been ushered in resulting from the period of the Bradford fire and the Hillsborough Disaster. The final chapter, one of the most enjoyable in the collection, is Phil Dine's history of the development of Rugby in south-eastern France. As a whole the collection makes a number of salient points and offers many avenues which the sports historian might consider for future work.

Mike Cronin

International Centre of Sports History and Culture

De Montfort University

Neil Tranter, Sport, Economy and Society in Britain, 1750-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, Pp. v + 112. £6.95. ISBN 0 521 57217 7 (hardback), 0521 57655 5 (paperback).

The publication of this book provides further evidence of the advance of sports history into the historical mainstream. Part of the prestigious `New Studies in Economic and Social History' series published by the Economic History Society for Cambridge University Press, Tranter's book is a monument to the progress made in the study of eighteenth and nineteenth century sport and leisure in the last twenty years or so and its recognition as a central, rather than a peripheral, concern for historians.

In keeping with the aims of the series, Tranter offers a summary of the existing literature and the key debates. His analysis is based around the accepted notion of a `revolution' in sporting culture, but he is anxious to examine the nature as well as the causes and consequences of this phenomenon. The rather vague chronology of the transformation from an `old' to a `new' sporting culture is a particular target of the author. He is critical of the earlier assumption that the decline of popular sport from the late eighteenth century led to a virtual void in working-class recreational activity for the first half of the nineteenth century. In this, he is largely in agreement with Hugh Cunningham, who noted some time ago that industrialization often provided an impetus, rather than a barrier, to both traditional and `newer' recreational activities.

In spite of the fact that broader accounts of industrial and economic development have long since recognised the partial and uneven pace of change, Tranter's view of a late Victorian `revolution' in sport is ultimately convincing. The growth in sporting clubs, participants and spectators as well as increasing capital investment and the widening of sport's geography and social range are all testament to this. It is of course essential that the historian notes the continuation of activities such as some blood sports, and the fact that a whole world of recreational activity in areas like Northumberland and Stirling remained outside the Victorian trend for institutional, codified, national sport. Yet, on balance, Tranter shows that from the 1860s and 1870s sport really did begin to change out of all recognition: modern sport `was truly an "invention" of the Victorian and Edwardian age' (p. 16). While this is probably true, we still need a better knowledge of sport in the mid-Victorian period, these rather shadowy decades which seem to have acted as a bridge between pre-modern and modern sport.

Tranter is at his best in the middle three chapters of the book, which consider the nature of this `sporting revolution' and the motives for involvement in sport at different levels. Many of these debates may be well-known to readers of this journal but Tranter's treatment of them is particularly incisive and useful for non-specialists. First of all, he takes issue with what he calls the `social diffusionist model' of sport passing downwards from the public schools to the middle class and then on the working class. Few historians would now accept such a simplistic interpretation, which not only passes over the importance of geographical proximity in the spread of sport but, more importantly, treats the lower levels of society as passive recipients of these recreational innovations.

This latter point is more significant still as a critique of the various social control arguments which Tranter addresses in chapter 4. Drawing on the connected issues of class relations in sport, the amateur-professional divide and player and spectator violence, he quite rightly argues that the strengths of both the cruder Marxist explanations, and the more subtle hegemonic interpretation put forward by John Hargreaves and others, are overshadowed by their weaknesses. Hegemony, in particular, may be a neat and appealing concept but it is simply not supported by the evidence. Indeed Tranter prefers to look to a broader web of interlocking factors - summed up in the title of chapter 5, `For Health, Prestige or Profit?' - to explain the appeal of sport to different social groups after 1860.

Not surprisingly, the economic dimension of sporting activity is dealt with most impressively. The economic preconditions for sport's Victorian transformation are well analyzed, as is the complex question of why people invested in sport. A major strength of the book is the careful way in which the wealth of illustrative material and quantitative data is used. Tranter misses nothing of significance, drawing particularly on the well-known work of historians like Vamplew on professional sport and marrying this with substantial data on recreational sport, particularly Lowerson's work on the middle class, Metcalfe's studies of Northumberland and his own work on the Stirling area. However, despite the range of material on offer, the reader is never allowed to lose sight of the basic argument or let the statistics swamp him or her. Tranter manages the difficult balancing act of allying specific examples with general arguments and, as such, has produced something more than just a summary of the current literature.

Finally, the book serves an important function in highlighting the weaknesses and gaps in the historiography. This is done implicitly in the course of the chapters, particularly the section on women's sport, which is less sure-footed than the rest of the book and reveals the need for more substantial studies of recreation for all classes of women to supplement the still rather fragmentary evidence which we have at present. Tranter also addresses the question explicitly in a concluding chapter, `Agenda for Research'. He indicates the importance of looking beyond the narrow focus of football, cricket and the rugby codes, which still dominate the field, and not assuming (as many still do) that British conclusions can be drawn from English examples. Most important, perhaps, is Tranter's wish to move away from the elite to the more obscure, a suggestion which might encourage researchers to begin to seriously look at the wealth of archival sources sitting in local record offices across the country.

Sport, Economy and Society should stand alongside Richard Holt's Sport and the British as a key work of synthesis and become an essential text for students as well as required reading for social and economic historians more generally.

Matthew Taylor

International Centre for Sports History and Culture

De Montfort University

Jack Williams, Cricket and England: A Cultural and Social History of the Inter-War Years, London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999, Pp. xx + 217. £ 35.00. ISBN 0-7146 4861 2.

An offspring of a doctoral dissertation, this book is intended to fill an obvious void in the historiography of modern cricket. Its author, Jack Williams, a history teacher at the Liverpool John Moores University, has rightly observed that previous literature on the game dealt mainly with the periods surrounding the inter-war years. He begins on the premise that a scholarly examination of cricket can reveal more about English character and culture than most other activities because of the transcendental importance that all classes of Englishmen have traditionally attached to this sport. Even when association football seemed to have captured the imagination of the bulk of the expanding English proletariat, cricket between the wars remained the game in which members of every rank of the social scale evinced the greatest interest. This is why Williams is prepared to argue that cricket can be considered `a totem of Englishness between the wars' even though he has to admit that it is impossible to calculate `even to the nearest 100,000' (p. 45) how many Englishmen were actually playing cricket and how many of them were spectators at that time (p. 54).

If inter-war cricket betrayed Victorian influences this was mainly because most of the leading figures in the sport during this period were relics of the nineteenth century. Such famous cricket administrators as Lord Harris, Lord Hawke, Sir Francis Lacey and Sir Pelham Warner had all been trained in Victorian public schools and universities. The MCC membership of this period was not much different in attitude and composition from that of the Victorian era. By this time, too, all cricket clubs, associations and leagues (both in England and throughout the British Empire) had come to accept the benevolent guidance of the patrician MCC. Even when serious objections were raised against certain rules or regulations, few rebels (if any at all) questioned the sanctity of cricket or the supreme authority of the MCC. On the surface, therefore, the myth of cricket's cleanliness and nobility was no less strong in the 1920s and 1930s than it had been in the preceding two generations. Williams regards these attitudes within and about the game as reflective of English political and cultural approaches generally. In his opinion, they speak eloquently to the general reluctance to tinker with the status quo and go far towards explaining why there was, notwithstanding the General Strike of 1926 and the demoralising impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s, so little demand for radical change in the British Isles during the interval between the Great Wars, when there was so much turmoil and upheaval almost everywhere else.

As is the case with most doctoral theses, this work has its peculiar strengths and weaknesses. While it purports, for example, to deal broadly with England, many of the statistics and primary research revolve mainly around Bolton. To his credit, however, the author occasionally casts a much wider net and is able to offer useful information on such important matters as the size, composition and behaviour of cricket crowds at various levels. In the chapter entitled `Interest in Cricket', Williams makes very good use of the findings of the Findlay Commission of 1937 and of the details appearing in assorted yearbooks published by some of the county cricket clubs. His chapter on the commercialization of cricket between the wars also includes much new and valuable information on the financial fortunes of the leading county clubs as well as some key individual players.

There is much intriguing and perceptive writing here on class and gender distinctions and the failure of both women and workers to respond aggressively to overt acts of discrimination. Williams puts this all down to the fact that English men and women, like the English rich and poor, generally operated on identical philosophical premises. Thus, for many years prior to the advent of the Players' Association in 1968, most professional cricketers took a rather fatalistic view of amateur privilege, snobbery and arrogance. Having accepted the forms and formalities of their social superiors, they saw no need to reject the principle of amateur captaincy even when being led by palpably inexperienced and inferior cricketers. The Victorian mythology of cricket required them to conduct themselves in the appropriate manner by obeying the orders of well-to-do (if not always aristocratic) amateurs. Here, Williams sometimes overstates his case and he might probably have come to different conclusions about the docility of professional cricketers had he paid more attention to the reactions of such crusty old war-horses as Sydney Barnes, Cecil Parkin and E.J. `Tiger' Smith, among others.

Cricket and England is well-researched and well-written, even though there is more than the occasional hint of repetition. It includes many interesting illustrations, some valuable statistical tables and a fine bibliography. It succeeds in demonstrating that cricket was directly related to the politics, culture and religion of inter-war England and showed the strength of social cohesion and cultural conformity of the English society at that time. The supreme irony here, as the author is always at pains to emphasize, is that the sport itself did more perhaps than any other activity to reflect the economic and social inequalities which then prevailed.

Keith A.P. Sandiford

University of Manitoba

Winnipeg, Canada

Frank Zarnowski, Olympic Glory Denied and a Final Opportunity for Glory Restored Glendale, CA: Griffin Publishing, 1996, Pp. 280., US $18.95. ISBN 1-882180-7-4.

Frank Zarnowski, the world's leading authority on multi-discipline events, has chosen an unusual theme for his latest work on the decathlon. He has examined the careers of 11 decathletes who were world record holders, or headed the world rankings, at the start of an Olympic year but failed to turn their evident superiority into an Olympic gold medal.

Of the 11 athletes who fell into this category, six were American, three German, one Estonian and one Norwegian. Three of the Americans, J.Austin Menaul (1912), Fait Elkins (1928) and Russ Hodge (1968), and two West Germans, H-H.Sievert (1936) and Siggi Wentz (1984), were all `Denied Olympic Glory' because of injury. The third German, Guido Kratschmer, was soundly beaten by Bruce Jenner (USA) at Montreal in 1976 while in 1980 Bob Coffman (USA) was not given a chance to prove his worth because of the US boycott of the Moscow Games. The most recent entry, Dan O'Brien (USA), lost the chance of Olympic gold in 1992 when he failed to clear the opening height in the pole vault at the US Olympic trials and missed his chance for a place on the team for the Barcelona Games. However, it should be added that, after the book was published, O'Brien was crowned Olympic champion at Atlanta in 1996.

The solitary Estonian, Heino Lipp missed out on two counts. Although the USSR had competed at the 1946 European Athletic Championships they were unable to participate in the 1948 Olympics as they were not yet affiliated to the Olympic movement. In 1948 Lipp headed the world decathlon rankings but even if the USSR had been admitted to the London Games, Lipp would not have been part of the team. Estonia was then a part of the USSR and as Lipp was considered politically `unsafe' neither he, nor any member of his family, were permitted to leave their native Estonia.

The inclusion of Bill Watson (USA) as the favourite for the 1940 Olympic title is perhaps justified on a purely statistical basis. But who is to say that another contender, from a country with a strong decathlon tradition, would not have emerged had not many of the world's top athletes been denied competition because of the war which resulted in the cancellation of the 1940 Games.

I would take issue with the author over the nomination of the Norwegian, Charles Hoff, as the favourite for the 1924 Olympic title. In no way does he meet the requirements Zarnowski has set for inclusion in the book. In fact, Hoff did not compete in his first and only decathlon until 1930, by which time he had turned professional, and to name him as an Olympic favourite for an event which took place six years earlier is purely speculative. Undoubtedly, Hoff was a fine all-round athlete but instead of being honoured as a national sporting hero for his 16 world pole vault records we learn that he is now reviled as a Quisling

This is just one of the many fascinating details which fill the book and the author has gone to extraordinary lengths to complete the biographies of the featured athletes.

He has interviewed every athlete - or their relatives - and has visited Europe several times in order to further his knowledge of the athletes about he whom writes so entertainingly.

Zarnowski's admirable study of Olympc decathlon `failures' could well be the subject of similiar books on the misfortunes of favourites in other events on the Olympic track and field programme and the authors could no better than to take this book as their role model.

Ian Buchanan

President

International Society of Olympic Historians

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