Peter Bishop, Tranmere Rovers Football Club, Images of England Series, Stroud: Tempus Publishing Limited, 1998, Pp. i+128.,Paperback ISBN 0 7524 1505 0.
First, a confession: I am a Tranmere Rovers fan, writing this shortly after arguably the greatest moment in Tranmere's history, the (unfortunately) losing appearance in the Worthington Cup Final, against Leicester City, in February 2000. As a fan, it is impossible not to enjoy this book, which is a pictorial record of the club from 1889 to 1998. For this market, the book serves its purpose very well, by providing a wealth of rare photographic material, with appropriate information in the captions. Of course the die-hard fan is left wanting more, but the book does not claim to be a complete club history, but more an enjoyable coffee table introduction to that history. It is part of an archive photographic series by the publisher, which seems to be deliberately focusing on lower league clubs, which the exception to date of Sunderland.
For those wishing to go further into the social history of the game, the book implicitly offers clues towards a broader social history. It raises the question of how photographs can be treated as evidence in their own right. Implicitly the photographs reveal a great deal about the social history of the game, through the kits of the players, the dress and composition of the fans, to the development of the stadium. Individual photos also pose questions about the wider social history of the game. For example, it was perhaps inevitable that Tranmere's ground was hit by a bomb during the Second World War, given that Birkenhead, if anything, suffered greater bomb damage than even Liverpool across the Mersey. How many other grounds were damaged in this way during the war? A photo of the first floodlit game at Prenton Park in September 1958 points towards one of the most interesting but still relatively unresearched areas of football history, the financial contribution which the fans have made to the development of their clubs. The first set of floodlights at Prenton Park was paid for by a £15,000 donation by the Supporters Association. The photo of quirky Birkenhead rock band Half Man Half Biscuit pre-dates the 90s phenomenon of the celebrity fan. Yet how many celebrity fans can say that they have demonstated the level of fandom shown by Half Man Half Biscuit when they turned down an appearance on Channel 4's The Tube rock programme, so as to avoid missing Tranmere play at home to Scunthorpe in Division 4 in 1986?! This was despite, apparently, the offer of a helicopter to get them to the ground in time for the second half.
What is perhaps most interesting about this book for the general reader is what it reveals about the preservation of the evidence of the social history of football. It reveals just how much of the sources of that history, including the rare photographs unearthed for this book, would have been lost, but for the efforts of enthusiastic, `amateur' (in a non-pejorative sense) historians, who seem to be associated with every league club. Peter Bishop, the author of this book, recalls that his old history teacher would never have thought it possible that some thirty years after leaving school he would be seen as an historian. He recalls that when he became programme editor for Tranmere Rovers in 1984, he found that the club had no records relating to its history, while the entire photographic collection consisted of 18 pictures from the 1960s and 1970s on the wall of an executive lounge. Yet enquiries from fans to the programme revealed a thirst for knowledge about the personalities and the games from the past, which led to a series of articles in the programme with accompanying photographs.
This lack of interest by the club itself in its own history was certainly fairly typical of league clubs in general at that time. Perhaps it was because football is so much about the here and now, the next result; it also surely reflected the fact that until recently, football was not seen as appropriate subject matter for `serious' history. The story the author relates in his introduction, as to how he came to build up what is now an archive of over 1,000 photographs of the club, appears to be a fairly typical one, replicated at the majority of football clubs. Bishop recalls that a firm of commercial photographers told him that they had destroyed their entire collection of post-war Tranmere photographs and negatives a few months before he contacted them; whereas a chance find during a house clearance preserved a substantial collection gathered by a former manager and secretary of the club. From my knowledge of other clubs, while it is clear that the clubs have been prepared to discard much of their historical records, fortunately many club officials have taken it upon themselves to preserve such material in their own homes.
Kevin Moore
Director
The National Football Museum, Preston
Timothy J. L. Chandler and John Nauright (Eds.), Making the Rugby World: Race, Gender and Commerce London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999, Pp. 256, hardback £42.50, ISBN 0 7146 4853 1, paperback £16.50, ISBN 0 7156 4411 0.
This sequel to Making Men: Rugby and Masculine Identity by Chandler and Nauright seeks to fill in the gaps left in the earlier book, particularly in terms of geography and gender, while at the same time looking at the impact of professionalism and commercialisation on the game. New light is certainly shed on these areas, but it is difficult to be impressed by this book. The editors eschew any chance of securing a wider, more popular readership _ which must have been their aim given the book's glossy cover and issue in paperback form _ by allowing many of the contributors to produce inaccessible essays peppered with jargon. In their overuse of fashionable academic buzzwords like `hegemony' and `habitus' the contributors will almost certainly have succeeded in alienating the ordinary rugby supporter from their readership.
In an essay clouded by the worst kind of obscure post-colonialist discourse, Maclean looks at rugby and masculinity in New Zealand, showing that though Maoris were accepted at an early stage it was not an equal relationship with white players. A much more accomplished piece by Nauright, scholarly yet accessible, offers a valuable insight into the origins of coloured rugby in South Africa, demonstrating that it was extremely popular in this community in the pre-apartheid years. Within coloured rugby he finds elements of carnival and parody, but also on-pitch violence and sanctions against Muslim players. In perhaps the most impressive piece, Terret examines the history of rugby's development in France, from its university origins in Paris, to its spread to the towns of the south-west. He explores the contradictions within the distinctive French playing style, on the one hand an elegance and joie de vivre, but on the other a more obvious machismo with an undercurrent of violence. Writing on the United States, Chandler is distracted by the possibility of seeing rugby as a significant `other', and overplays the connection between rugby and beer drinking on college campuses. Surely a similar relationship can be found within gridiron football? Bonini finds Italian rugby taken up by fascists attracted by the sport's physical contact, individual potential and group spirit. He shows that although fascist connotations stultified the sport's spread it was still able to become the dominant mode of play in smaller towns like Rovigo, L'Aquila and Treviso.
Elsewhere Carle and Nauright look at women playing rugby in Australia, arguing that their involvement in the sport often imitates masculine stereo types. The authors, however, seem more interested in proving that despite general contentment amongst female players, they were getting a raw deal from clubs and male counterparts. Some of these comments are valid, but others are less tenable. For example, the success of their female team _ in competitions - in comparison with the men's team is cited as a reason for more equal facilities. Yet this ignores very obvious commercial considerations, such as crowds and TV money, which will be brought in even by an unsuccessful Australian men's side. The latter section of this book focuses on the commercial dimension of rugby. Hutchins and Phillips provide a useful study of the globalization of rugby through the rugby world cup, and the WRU might find some solace in the uncovering of poor commercial management at the 1991 and 1997 tournaments. P. David Howe looks at commercialism on a much smaller scale, in the context of Pontypridd rugby club. He is persuaded by the branding of the club as traditional and unfashionable, with an emphasis on home grown players, and sees this image reflected in its use of a similarly unfashionable sponsor, Rizla cigarette papers. Surprisingly though, he offers no comment on the peculiarity of a healthy sporting activity being financed by a company associated with physically damaging addiction and drug culture. Howe also fails to acknowledge that Pontypridd's recent expansion has been at the expense of other valley clubs, and his claim that it has some kind of monopoly on player-supporter fraternization among premier clubs has no basis in truth.
This collection is not without value, as there is much here that is revealing on rugby, race and masculinity. Its solid core of essays on the history of non-imperial rugby development will be useful to students of the history of sport and, in the case of the more accessible pieces, may be of interest to the ordinary rugby supporter. The essays on commercialisation ask interesting question, but are already beginning to feel dated. Ultimately however the wider success of this book will be hampered by the editors' failure to deter the contributors from indulging in the modish language of sociological discourse.
Martyn J. Powell
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Fan Hong, Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Women's Bodies in Modern China, London: Frank Cass, 1997, Pp. xiv + 342. $54.50 hardback and $26.50 paperback, ISBN (hardback) 0 7146 4633 4 and ISBN (paperback) 0714643343.
In the epilogue to her exhaustively researched and written study, Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Women's Bodies in Modern China, Fan Hong states that the "physical emancipation of women, arguably to an extent demonstrated nowhere else in the world given the extraordinary phenomenon of footbinding, has been the prerequisite of all subsequent emancipation in China" (p. 291). This is the crux of Hong's argument; that footbinding was both a metaphorical and real expression of the social and political circumstances surrounding women's social and political roles and the relations between the sexes in China from 1840 to 1949. She uses exercise to illustrate her contention that female, and even male, social liberation was inextricably linked to female physical emancipation.
Hong's project analyzes "women's exercise in China between 1840 and 1949 in its social, cultural and political contexts in order to define its critical importance for female physical liberation" (p. 2). The book is even more successful as a historical examination of the female social role using exercise as an arena in which women experienced, at different times, both liberation and oppression. Important to the China context, of course, is Confucian doctrine and its dichotomization of and hierarchical valuing of male and female traits. Hong uses this as the subtext to describing general social attitudes and practices.
English-language scholarship includes few resources on either the history of Chinese women or the history of Chinese physical education according to Hong's selected bibliography. (The sole entry of works on physical education is Gensen Hao's 1926 publication entitled Physical Education in China.) Also rare are contemporary scholarly analyses of Chinese "body culture"; the type of studies that are ubiquitous in the West. Susan Brownell's (1995) Training the Body for China: Sport in the Moral Order of the People's Republic is one of the few examples. Hong's work is a much-needed addition to the historiography of Eastern attitudes towards and practices of exercise and physical culture.
There is much to recommend to the reader with a general interest in Chinese political history as Hong persuasively argues that the political history of China in this period is tied to the ideologies associated with gender roles and the inevitable question of women's physical status. As a native of the People's Republic of China, Hong is uniquely positioned to both access and interpret the relevant historical evidence.
Scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century history of Western female physical activity, particularly England and the United States, will find many parallels with the Chinese context. The belief in menstrual disability that was widespread within the Western medical establishment had similar consequences as the binding of feet; women's physical, social, and intellectual lives were constrained and controlled. The rhetoric that was used to promote exercise for girls and women in both contexts was also similar; strong mothers bear strong sons who are important for the future of the nation.
Footbinding as a metaphor is important and could be drawn into the analysis even more. I wanted to read more about the (lack of) progression of women's emancipation through this culturaland physicalpractice. Scholars who study human movement from historical, social scientific, or biological perspectives would be interested in the specifics of this aesthetic and social behavior. The metaphor of footbinding is so powerful because it not only tells an ideological story, but a profoundly physical one of women who were purposely, permanently disfigured and disabled.
Also noteworthy were the ways that social reform movements took place from the grassroots level through the highest social levels; indeed, Empress Dowager Cixi issued the "Anti-footbinding edict of 1902 "after sustained pressure from foreign women of various nationalities." (p. 57) While the key players even in those movements geared toward female social and physical progress were male political leaders, Hong identifies a small group of elite, female radicals of the upper classes. One such figure was Qui Jin (1875 _ 1907), who among other accomplishments was the Principal of Datong Normal College that included in its programs a physical education institute for the training of revolutionary soldiers; under Qui Jin's leadership this included women soldiers.
There were many intriguing, and some surprising, elements of Hong's story. For example, thousands of well-to-do Chinese women and men studied physical education, among other subjects, in Japan around the turn of the twentieth century. These students returned to China to teach Japanese style gymnastics and exercise in schools, general and physical education college programs. These students also contributed to the translation of articles on gymnastics and physical exercise that appeared in journals and newspapers from the last decades of the 19th century to the early years of the 20th century (p. 85). According to Hong, some of the Japanese-educated women returned to become active participants in the women's movement of the early twentieth century.
The strong role of western Christian missionaries in emancipating Chinese women is also well documented by Hong. The far-reaching influence of the missionaries' Western values and Christianity extended into the realm of anti-footbinding societies and brought broader challenges to the values promoted by the centuries-old tenets of Confucianism. The missionaries directly confronted Chinese traditional cultural beliefs about female physical fragility with their introduction of physical education and sports for women.
The rise and fall of social movements designed for general social or specifically female liberation were always subject to the continual rise and fall in influence of Confucianism. For example, within the girl's schools where full body exercises had been practiced, after 1910 only restrictive hand gymnastics were permitted. The crackdown was so severe in this period of Confucian revivalism that although China participated in three National and seven regional competitions, and four Far East Olympics Games from 1910-1919, no women participated.
In addition, social movements typically emphasized class rather than sex struggles. This is evident after 1921 with the establishment of the Communist Party and the division of ideologies and practices between the Communists and the Nationalists. While the Communists advocated modern education and vigorous physical activity for peasant and working women, the Nationalists promoted a more traditional platform that advanced Marxist theories of economic rather than sexual liberation. Both parties adopted selected tenets of Confucian ideas to promote exercise for women. The Communists emphasized strong motherhood while the Nationalists viewed female exercise as a tool of the party.
Despite this bleak history, Chinese women can boast of having had the same sport opportunities as Chinese men since 1955, fully 22 years before American women. Fan Hong's Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom is an important work that forces the reader to look beyond the Western perspective for some insights about the role of physical emancipation in the social lives of women.
Susan Zieff
San Francisco State University
J. A. Mangan, Sport in Europe: Politics, Class, Gender. London: Frank Cass, 1999, Pp. 268 + ix. ISBN 0-7146-5 (cloth) £45, 0-7146-8005-2 (paper) £25.
Although presented in book format, this is the first volume of the recently established European Sports History Review, yet another new journal dealing with sports issues from Frank Cass, and as such the contents are a somewhat more diverse collection of essays than one would normally expect from an edited thematic book. That said, the ten chapters represent a well-researched selection of wide-ranging essays covering England, Scotland, Poland, the German Democratic Republic and Eastern Europe.
Despite this somewhat eclectic nature of the collection, one of its strengths is the importance it gives to sport in Eastern Europe. Teresa Ziólkowska's short look at the Jewish sports organisations in interwar Poland focusing on Poznañ is an important contribution to the growing body of work on Jewish attitudes to and involvement in sport, which has also been admirably served by a recent issue of the Journal of Sports History.
Tara Magdalinski's exploration of the creation of sporting traditions in East Germany and their contribution to the building of a national identity in a new state is also valuable, while Wojciech Lipoñski breaks new ground, at least in the English language, with his overview of sport in the Slavic nations of Europe before the creation of the Soviet bloc. As he points out with justified indignation, most historians of Europe, let alone European sport, have ignored the history of Eastern Europe. His essay stretches from traditional Slavic folk sport to Slavic participation in the pre-World War Two Olympic Games and opens up new avenues of investigation.
There are two articles on women's soccer. Pfister, Fasting, Scraton and Vazquez look at the development of women's soccer in Germany, England, Norway and Spain. While the essay contains valuable information, it relies heavily on secondary sources and is probably the weakest of all the contributions. In contrast, Althea Melling's essay on women's soccer internationals between England and France between 1920 and 1945 is a model of research and throws light on a hitherto virtually unknown aspects of women's sport.
Calum Brown's well-researched two-part essay on Sport and the Scottish Office in the Twentieth Century raises a number of important issues about the nature of the Scottish Office's policy towards sport in terms of class, gender and national identity. It should be essential reading for anyone who assumes that there is any entity that could be described as `British' sport.
Colm Hickey's essay on English elementary education from 1870 to 1914 attempts to correct received wisdom by arguing that many elementary schools provided their pupils with athletic activities, such as football, in addition to drill instruction during this period. He argues that although drill was the basis of most physical instruction in state schools, by the early years of the twentieth century its had been broadened to encompass other, non-militaristic, forms of physical activity and particularly team games.
Football during the same period is the subject of Rob Lewis's essay on the `Social Darwinism' inherent in the attitudes of soccer's middle-class supporters who saw their ideals betrayed by professionalism and the influx of the working masses into the sport in the late-Victorian period. As is usual with Lewis's work, it is meticulously researched and closely argued, so it seems slightly churlish to make the criticism that the article is weakened by its lack of reference to the fact that the same debate raged with far greater intensity in Rugby for two decades and was the direct cause of the 1895 split.
Adrian Harvey's essay on "the real story of the evolution of modern football" is probably the most important in the book, certainly for historians of the football codes. He contends that previous historians have misunderstood soccer's pre-history and that, far from being codified by the public schools and diffused down to the working classes, football had been organised, codified and played widely before the formation of the Football Association in 1863. To support his contention he makes widespread use of advertisements and articles about football in Bell's Life and other publications of the mid-nineteenth century, unearthing match reports and the playing rules of a number of football clubs of the 1830s to 1850s.
The article is an excellent corrective but it somewhat overstates its case. Certainly Tony Mason's work on football has pointed to the importance of Sheffield to the development of the organisation and rules of Association football. Other historians, myself included, have argued that the modern football codes experienced an exponential boom of popularity in the late nineteenth century because football was widely played in one form or another before the codifications of 1863 and 1871.
Despite its many strengths, the article also commits the mistake of assuming a continuity between the `football' of the pre-modern period and today's Association football. As Harvey himself points out (p. 107), the rules developed by these early clubs allowed a great deal of handling by players; he argues that "the emphasis was on kicking rather than throwing the ball" yet the same was true of the Rugby game until the 1880s and was not a feature only of Association rules.
It is also unclear how many of the clubs he notes, outside of those members of the Sheffield Association, survived into modern football times - and at least one of those quoted which did, Liverpool F.C., was in fact a rugby club. It is therefore mistaken to assume that these early football clubs were the forerunners of soccer clubs. And, of the examples quoted of towns in Cumbria and Lancashire which had clubs in the 1840s and 1850s, Ulverstone, Manchester, Liverpool, Orrell and Rochdale became hotbeds of the Rugby code between 1870 and the mid-1890s, undermining the implied continuity of Association-type football.
The picture of mid-Victorian football is far more complicated that the article describes. Soccer did not become the dominant football code it is today until the mid-1890s, following the success of the Football League and the huge leap in popularity of the FA Cup. Indeed, up until the mid-1880s, Rugby was generally assumed to be the senior code. To seek to draw a direct ancestral line from the football clubs of the 1830s to the modern Association football clubs is to collapse the complexity of the continuities and discontinuities which marked the birth of the modern football codes. Nevertheless, this article is a major contribution to early football history.
One final point about the proliferation of sports history journals should be made. None of the articles here would be out of place in Cass's flagship International Journal of the History of Sport . Indeed, their value is somewhat diminished by their appearance in a journal with a much smaller readership. It would make more sense for Cass to publish the IJHS more frequently, allowing scholars to keep up to date with the latest research rather than constantly scanning publishers' catalogues to discover if yet another journal is demanding their attention - and money.
Tony Collins
International Centre for Sports History and Culture
De Montfort University
R. Potts and P. A. Croxson, Bibliography of Model Yachting London: The Curved Air Press, 1999, £12, Pp. 149, ISBN 1 873148 10 0.
Russell Potts needs no introduction to most readers of The Sports Historian for it was he who was responsible for editing this journal for many years, helping transform it from a collection of photocopied articles to a professional looking journal. Those who know him are also well aware of his long-time interest in the sport of model yachting and his many publications on the subject. This bibliography reflects the breadth and depth of his knowledge on the literature of the subject which as one soon learns from reading the bibliography is vast.
For each of the 250 entries full bibliographical details are provided _ author, title, place of publication, publishers, year of publication, number of pages, size, etc. Details of series it is part of, other editions, etc are also included where appropriate. The vast majority of entries also include a lengthy annotation, describing the content of the publication, its significance, strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Like any good bibliographer, the compilers outline in detail the scope of the bibliography, its place within the existing bibliographical framework and literature, organisation, sources consulted, etc. There is also an introductory essay on model yachting as a technological sport to help the reader get an insight into some of the major issues surrounding the sport.
All aspects of model yachting are included from trivia to higher degree theses, juvenile as well as adult literature. Those of particular interest to competitive sailors have been marked with an asterisk.
This is a bibliography which will come to play an important role in the study and pursuit of what to date has been a minority sport. It helps establish a formal record of what exists, but which up until now has been known to only a small number of enthusiasts in the world, and held in the back of their minds and on pieces of paper.
It also illustrates the value of a highly competitive sports specific bibliography. The literature of major sports such as cricket, football, horse racing and rugby is simply too vast to document in this way. That is there are too many primary and secondary sources to include in a single volume.
Let's hope that other enthusiasts will follow in their wake enabling the general public to get a grasp of what their sport is all about and the academic historian an opportunity to venture outside the more common and oft quoted sporting activities.
Richard William Cox
UMIST
Samuel O. Regalado, Viva Baseball! Latin Major Leaguers and Their Special Hunger, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1998, Pp. 224, $16.95, ISBN 0-252-02372-2. Paperback.
The impressive series on Sports History from the University of Illinois Press rolls on. Regalado's work joins a list of considerable distinction. As with some other writers on this list, Regalado is a pioneer in his field. He has written on a topic where, although scholarly research has been done previously, he is the first to tell the tale as a whole, to develop some over-arching themes. He does so to good effect.
This reviewer first started watching Baseball over thirty years ago, and so he has lived through the accelerating impact of players from a "Latin" background. In particular, it was a pleasure to read about "Mike" Cuellar, a southpaw pitcher with the Orioles who made such an impression with his marvelously controlled, graceful, pitching. Cuellar also serves as a reminder of one of Regalado's main points. Cuellar was a Cuban, a key source in the Caribbean for Major League recruitment. That is, it was. The Dominican Republic has replaced Cuba in this role.
One of the other main themes is that expressed in the book's subtitle. "Latins" had a particular hunger for success, combined with the experience of finding barriers put in the way of their drive for success. Here Regalado has a problem which is not resolved in his work. The group of players he is discussing are defined by language. As a result, many of their problems, whether in the early days or, more importantly, since the 1950's, revolved around problems of communication. However, race was an issue of central importance. Black Spanish-speaking players faced problems that white Spanish-speaking players did not. Some of Regalado's most telling sections focus on the shock that Black players experienced when faced with segregated facilities for the first time. He wants to argue that Latin players are a definable, single group. Given North American realities, this argument must be challenged.
Regalado is good on a number of major figures, such as Clemente, Valenzuela and the Alou brothers. He notes how late in his career it was, before Clemente was given the recognition that his talents deserved. He writes effectively on the phenomenon of "Fernandomania" (Valenzuela) and how, eventually, Felipe Alou broke into management. This last part of the story has strong echoes in the recent history of other sports in other places. Not least, one is drawn into comparisons with the difficulties former players from an Afro- Caribbean background have had in gaining management jobs in British soccer.
Regalado has made good use of interviews as well as archival and, above, all newspaper sources. As indicated earlier in this review, he is not the first in his field, and so he has the chance to use more specialised work to aid his synthesis. Obviously, this is a labour of love. Regalado communicates his enthusiasm to his reader. This book makes for instructive and interesting reading.
S.J.S. Ickringill
University of Ulster
James Riordan and Arnd Krüger (eds.), The International Politics of Sport in the 20th. Century, London and New York: E. & F. N. Spon, 1999, £17.99, Pp. x + 254, ISBN 0-419-21160-8.
The illustration used for this book's cover is the infamous picture of two black American athletes giving the black power salute at the 1968 Mexico Olympics during the playing of the US national anthem for the 200 metres awards ceremony. The juxtaposition of Olympic tradition _ the ceremonial aspect is stressed by the manner in which Peter Norman, the Australian silver medallist, and officials were standing respectfully to attention _ and an overt political gesture delivered on the world stage illuminates the book's central theme, that is, how sport has been shaped and transformed by politics during the twentieth century.
Paradoxically, what readers will not find in an otherwise useful volume is much detail about this particular episode. Despite being referred to in both Arnd Krüger's chapter on the Olympic movement (p.20) and Othello Harris' study of black athletes in the USA (p.169), the incident itself is given only a few lines. Readers will be none the wiser, except in terms of either learning or being reminded that the salute was given by Tommie Smith and John Carlos. In many respects, this example highlights the book's principal strength and weakness. On the one hand, collectively the chapters written by several different (and often distinguished) contributors provide an informed, wide-ranging and up-to-date picture of international politics and sport over a lengthy time period. On the other hand, pressure to cover the whole century means that interesting episodes, like that mentioned above, warrant only a cursory mention. Significantly, the excellent historical synthesis of sport in South Africa by Grant Jarvie and Irene Reid is helped by their decision (p.235) to concentrate on the key period between 1948-92.
Likewise, there exists an enduring tension regarding the book's attempt to establish how sport, having been increasingly politicised after the First World War, became even more political after the Second World War. Thus, the two opening chapters tread an uneasy line between telling a story over a one hundred year period and specifically analysing the impact of politics. Both Krüger and Bill Murray provide sound syntheses of their respective topics, that is, the history of the Olympic movement and FIFA; indeed, both chapters will go on my students' reading list. However, both authors, especially Krüger, experience difficulty in integrating politics into the story, and end up by providing more of a history of the Olympic movement or FIFA than a critical analysis of the impact of politics thereupon.
Remaining chapters _ these cover fascism, the international workers movement, religion, women, black athletes, South African apartheid, disability, sexuality and terrorism - offer selective case studies illuminating the evolving link between politics and sport, most notably on several under-researched aspects. Despite their inconsistent quality _ this is a regular feature of edited works _ and variable relevance to the book's central theme, readers will gain numerous insights into the politics of twentieth century sport, including the dictum that politically _ to quote Krüger - `nothing is more successful than success' (p.85) in sport. Riordan, though writing about communist sports policy, summarised the book's central message: `All that can be said is that sport would no longer seem to be (if it ever was) the neutral, apolitical medium that some people once considered it to be' (p.62). Moreover, his chapter on communist sport (pp.48-64), though leaving the reviewer wanting far more on post-1989 developments in both former communist bloc states and those countries (ie. China, Cuba, North Korea) where communist sports policy lives on (p.48), provides a useful set of headers (e.g. nation-building, social objectives) for those studying the state's role in sport.
Finally, Krüger and Riordan would have helped readers by offering an editorial overview and/or conclusion amounting to something more than a two-page outline, particularly given the wide range of contributions and the cost of the book. In the meantime, their volume, alongside others like Pierre Arnaud and James Riordan's Sport and International Politics: the impact of fascism and communism on sport (1998), must be welcomed as part of a belated shift of attention towards the international politics of sport. It reminds also about the need for sports historians to adopt a clear analytical framework for studying politics and sport in order to allow the investigation of the politics and sport linkage in a fuller and more consistent manner.
Peter J. Beck
Kingston University
Peter J. Seddon. (Comp.), A Football Compendium: An Expert Guide to the Books, Films and Music of Association Football Boston Spa: The British Library, 1999, £30, Pp. Xvi + 815, ISBN 0-7123-1118-1.
There are two good reasons why you should go out and buy this compendium without delay.
At £30 per copy it represents the best value for money I have come across in printed matter for many years and I doubt that British Library Publishing will be able to afford a 2nd print run at this price. Certainly the commercial sector could not afford to publish a tome of this volume for £30. Production of 834 pages of quality printing on 120 sgm paper cased in a multi-colour hard cover alone will cost £30 on a 1,000 print run and that is leaving aside the salaries of others involved in the process such as the typists, editor, designers etc. My suspicions are that like the first edition of Padwick it will soon be out of print and without the prospect of further print runs double its price and as such represent a sound financial investment.
Over and above this reason however, is the fact that it provides an invaluable reference source. Peter Seddon should be praised by librarians, journalists and sports historians throughout the land for spending what must amount to virtually every working hour over the past few years putting the whole thing together. How he found the time to locate, obtain and look through the contents of over 3,500 monographs in the past four years makes my mind boggle. The compendium is simply a mine of information covering every imaginable topic from Ballet to the World Cup. It now contains 133% (ie 3,500) more titles than the first edition published only four years ago. Ironically, `comprehensive' has been dropped from the sub-title and replaced with `expert guide' but within its terms of reference, it cannot now fall far short of the former definition. Curiously, the price is also half of the much smaller first edition. To me it is a tacit admission of the criticisms I made in my review of the 1st edition regarding coverage and price (see International Journal of the History of Sport, 13, 2 (August 1996), 252-6.), however, I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
In this second edition, the compiler gives the reader a better insight into his rationale for what is included but still does not reveal much about his strategy and method of compilation.
The overall structure is good and shows appreciation of the history, structure and interests in football. The main sections are: History and Development, Club Histories, Personalities, UK Cup Competitions, the International Game, Watching the Game, Theory and Practice, Football as Business, Literature and the Arts, Reference Books, Wit and Humour, Hobbies and Pastimes, Films, Music and Sound Recordings. These are followed by Name, Club, Title and Subject indexes.
Each section has an introductory overview of the topic which overall I thought were very helpful. Most show a thorough appreciation of the subject matter and literature but as one might expect some are weaker than others. The Club histories section (arranged by League status and then chronologically), is much improved on the 1st edition and the sections on Art and Literature, Music, etc are outstanding. The only weak link remains the Theory and Practice section, partly because much of the literature is published as journal articles and conference papers and therefore not included.
Production is first rate. I have already alluded to the quality of print and paper. The layout and use of illustrations (in the form of cartoons and reproduced covers) was also pleasing to my eye.
The majority of entries were complete with the usual title, followed by author's name, place of publication, publisher, year of publication, number of pages details. Most also indicated whether it was illustrated, indexed, had a bibliography, ISBN number and where applicable a British Library Reference.
A large percentage of the entries, presumably the ones personally checked by the compiler, had annotations ranging from one to as many as 20 or more lines. In the main these were helpful although I must express there was a tremendous variance in quality. In his Introduction, Seddon describes this as an evaluative bibliography which I guess gives him license to express his own personal views. Unfortunately, these are sometimes misinformed, biased or emotive.
The inclusion of information relating to the British Library reference and ISBN makes it useful to libraries and booksellers. The price guides included are most unusual in a publication of this nature. Whilst they may be of interest to collectors (and questionably dealers) they will be quickly out-of-date, detracting from the currency of the publication as a whole. A separate publication would in my opinion have been a much better option.
A number of theses (excluded from the 1st edition) are also included although in something of a haphazard fashion. To begin with not all theses successfully submitted to UK universities are included. Dave Edmundson's study of the PFA, Manchester 1987, is one such example. Of those which are included, the degree for which the thesis was submitted is not noted. Although it does state whether it was for a Masters or Doctoral degree, the reader is not able to distinguish between a Master's degree dissertation and MLitt thesis (both types of which are included) despite the fact that there is considerable difference in scope, scholarship and often accessibility. Although annotations are included for theses one is suspicious as to whether many of these had actually been consulted. This is because the annotations are usually brief - `a scholarly overview'. (Surely one can assume that if a thesis has been accepted for a higher degree it is scholarly.) Occasionally, the degree awarded or the degree awarding institution is incorrect (Eric Dunning's thesis A20, for example, was submitted for a Master's not doctoral degree and Peter Hutchin's Ph.D. thesis B1903 was submitted to the University of Sussex, not Surrey). Many of the minor club histories also included minimal bibliographical details, often no more than author and title, which again suggests they had not actually been seen by the compiler. It would have been helpful to the collector and librarian, etc to note that the publication was included but `not seen' by the compiler as did Padwick and his successor's in the bibliography of cricket.
Whilst the compiler claims in his introduction to have excluded periodicals, Sporting Heritage, a highly irregular and insignificant publication containing no references to football has a glowing eight line annotation. There are other examples, B476 is an article published in a periodical, B1733 is a handbook which is strictly a periodical and one questions why the one issue is included when it does not contain a special feature in that particular volume. As noted in my review of the 1st edition, a scholarly bibliography places itself within the existing framework and details its method of compilation. That way the user knows exactly what territory has been covered and how much wider they might or might not need to search. Again, these are shortcomings that could have been easily overcome had the work been overseen by someone trained in the art and science of bibliography to match the wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm of the compiler for the sport of football. This disappoints me intensely, since the British Library, once the great bastion of scholarship, appear to have allowed itself to be driven by commercial objectives.
The annotations, which vary in size and the information they disclose, are both the strong and weak points of the compendium. Whilst some provide the reader with detail as to what is included, a flavour for the style and emphasis (eg. B1887), others tell you nothing of interest. Occasionally the annotation eulogises a particular publication but does not give any more detail than the author and title, eg. A365. For entry A226 - a lengthy annotation is provided which has nothing to do with the book. Several of the annotations have also been radically changed from the first edition which causes me some puzzlement.
Again there has been no attempt to include periodical titles or conference papers which I think is a lost opportunity to create a highly comprehensive work. Whilst there is an element of truth in what the compiler says about these being increasingly easier to locate using other sources I do not accept the wider rationale and it leaves some areas, such as the science of football incredibly weak. This is a point I have laboured elsewhere (see my review of A Rugby Compendium, The Sports Historian 18, 2 (November 1998), pp183-198) and will not bore you with the same reasoning again.
There are some books included which stretch one's imagination as to why they should be. It is debatable whether C223, Bill Erich's Cricketing Days, for example, which says nothing about his footballing life has a rightful place. A small number of publications are misplaced, this relates particularly to some listed under biographies that are more accurately club histories. However, to criticise just a small number of the approximately 7,000 entries in this manner is churlish.
Although the club histories section is much improved on the first edition, there remain some significant ommissions, the reasons for which I am not sure (eg, histories of Northwich Victoria, Burton-on-Trent Football club, etc). Had the compiler detailed his methodology this would have helped explain and again inform the user of how heavily they could reply on the publication for complete coverage of the existing literature.
The compiler's delcared intention "to make the book enjoyable to read, a source of entertainment, a celebration of the game, a narrative journey through the entire history of the football world through the medium of books, films and records which have chronicled it..", it does! I have already spent many enjoyable hours looking through it, being fascinated by what is included, amused by many of the compiler's comments and know I will return to it again and again. There is no question in my mind that it will become a standard reference work and deservedly so. However, until it broadens its scope to world wide English language literature, adopts a more systematic approach to compilation and rids itself of emotive comments it can never be regarded as the Padwick of football.
Richard William Cox
UMIST
Alan Tomlinson, The Game's Up: Essays in the Cultural Analysis of Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture Aldershot and Vermont, USA: Arena, Ashgate Publishing, 1999, Pp. xvi + 306, ISBN 1-85742-248-1 (hbk) £45.00 1-8742-249-X (pbk) £19.95.
Significantly, Alan Tomlinson, though conceding that the recent period has witnessed a major advance in sport's academic status, feels the need to commence a collection of his essays with a brief preface urging readers and others to take the study of sport in its various economic, historical, political, and sociological forms more seriously. For him, only cultural studies treats leisure and sport as a central topic for study (p.x). Otherwise, its study occupies still a `marginal' (p.vii) place in academic research.
Tomlinson's standing in sports studies means that his views on what seems to be a long-standing, indeed enduring, source of angst for sports historians must be taken seriously at a time when the rapid growth in sports-based degree courses, journals and publications, alongside the high visibility of sport in contemporary British society, might have prompted a more optimistic impression. He cites the case of Anthony Giddens' Sociology (1997), a major academic text yet lacking any chapter on leisure and sport: `there is really very little justification for such an omission, other than conventional and narrow thinking' (p.x). Few would regard Giddens, who is currently Director of LSE, the 1999 BBC Reith lecturer and author of the much-hyped The Third Way, as either a conventional or narrow thinker _ certainly, Alan Tomlinson would seem to have blown his prospects of a job at LSE! - but the example is an interesting one. How is it that academics who often turn first to the sports pages of their daily newspapers, or, in the case of Giddens, confess to being a soccer addict, even worse, a long-time Tottenham Hotspur season ticket holder (Emily Mott, `Portrait of Anthony Giddens', Financial Times Weekend Magazine, 11 March 2000, p.32), can continue to write out leisure and sport of their teaching and publications? Tomlinson pulls no punches: `The impact of the serious study of sport, leisure and popular culture can no longer be denied. The game is well and truly up for those to whom sport and leisure are mere epiphenomena some kind of "world apart" ' (p.xii). Reportedly, Giddens is now preparing a new edition of his sociology text, and it will be interesting to see whether he responds to Tomlinson's call.
The fundamental problem, as Tomlinson concedes, is that many academics remain to be convinced that `the game is up'. Whether or not this collection of essays will do the job remains debatable, particularly as their origins _ the book comprises `revised' (p.xi) versions of essays written between 1982-94 for varying audiences and published in a wide range of journals and edited works _ means that the book lacks any consistent overall theme, excepting support for Tomlinson's campaign for the study of sport to be taken more seriously. In this vein, the opening chapter, based on his 1994 inaugural professorial lecture, and the preface perform a kind of overview role. In any case, Tomlinson, harnessing his typically clear, perceptive and punchy prose style to undoubted research expertise, is always a good read, and individual chapters ensure that readers, many of whom, he suggests, are likely to be undergraduates, will benefit also from his informed appraisal of key issues in the study of sport, leisure and culture. Even so, the fact that some chapters prove reasonably accessible in book and journals already, even allowing for out-of-print publications, might lead some readers to think twice before purchasing the book.
Generally speaking, methodological concerns, particularly of a sociological nature, are to the fore, if only by way of response to previous "Ology bashing" (p.1). But the reviewer, if approaching the book as a sports history text rather than reviewing it, would have undertaken a more limited read focusing upon, say, Tomlinson's invaluable history of leisure and cultural studies in Britain (chap.4) and selected chapters covering football and the Olympics (Chaps. 6-12).
Peter J. Beck
Kingston University