Background
Guttmann, Allen was born on October 13, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Emile Jacob Guttmann and Jeanette Krulewich.
(Sports in America, particularly big-time collegiate and p...)
Sports in America, particularly big-time collegiate and professional sports, have never been more popular. Modern sports events bring us breathtaking demonstrations of grace and power and provide the focal point for the leisure time of hundreds of thousands of Americans. But the world of sports is also increasingly a scene of moral corruption and physical abuse. In A Whole New Ball Game, Allen Guttmann examines the American fascination with sport and what that fascination reveals about our culture. Like the transformation of American society in the twentieth century, the modernization of American sports has seemed inevitable and ubiquitous. As Guttmann shows, American sports reflect American culture: our sports are secular, bureaucratic, and specialized, and as part of our democratic society, they require at least in theory an equality among competitors. The rules of modern sports reflect their evolution from earlier, less differentiated games. To master the skills required by modern sports, athletes train scientifically, employing the most technologically advanced equipment. And, like almost every other aspect of our lives, sports are quantified: our athletes and the media are almost obsessed with records. In tracing the development of modern sports in America from the rituals of pre-Columbian cultures to the late-1980s in this book, Guttmann discusses the failure of colonial New England and the antebellum South to influence the evolution of sports. He shows how baseball, a sport that combines premodern and modern characteristics, performed important social functions, helping to Americanize generations of immigrants. Examining basketball as the archetypal modern sport, Guttmann discusses its invention in the YMCA and its vulnerablity to corruption by gamblers, and he provocatively reviews the transformation of informal chlidren's play into adult-sponsored leagues. One chapter of this important study offers and engrossing account of the female athletes's transition from social outcast to superstar; another scrutinizes the failure to achieve racial equality in sports. Guttmann also presents a scathing analysis of the destruction of the athlete's body through drug use and an examination of the search for alternative forms of physical activity. A Whole New Ball Game demonstrates conclusively that sports are an integral part of modern society and that, taken as a whole, they may be the best indicators we have of who we are as a people.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807842206/?tag=2022091-20
(Politics has always been an integral part of the Olympics...)
Politics has always been an integral part of the Olympics - not an occasional intruder in the form of a boycott, protest, or act of terrorism. In this probing social history, distinguished by a lively mix of journalism and scholarship, Allen Guttmann discusses the intended and actual meaning of the modern Olympic Games, from 1896 to 2000. Recounting the memorable and significant athletic events of the Olympics in terms of their social and political impact, Guttmann demonstrates that the modern games were revived to propagate a political message and continue to serve political purposes. This second edition of Guttmann's critically acclaimed history includes coverage of the controversial tenure of Juan Antonio Samaranch as president of the International Olympic Committee, a period tainted by rising drug use among athletes and scandals accompanying the awarding of sites and marked by the debut of openly professional athletes and the significantly increased role of female athletes.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0252070461/?tag=2022091-20
(Allen Guttmann is a professor of American Studies at Amhe...)
Allen Guttmann is a professor of American Studies at Amherst College and author of,"From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports" (1978). In his new book, "The Games Must Go On", Guttmann provides an assessment of Brundage's role in shaping the modem Olympic games. This work is both a biography of Brundage and an evaluation of his career as an international sports figure.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231054440/?tag=2022091-20
( Originally published in 1978, From Ritual to Record was...)
Originally published in 1978, From Ritual to Record was one of the first books to recognize the importance of sports as a lens on the fundamental structure of societies. In this reissue, Guttmann emphasizes the many ways that modern sports, dramatically different from the sports of previous eras, have profoundly shaped contemporary life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231133413/?tag=2022091-20
( An exploration of the ways in which modern sports have ...)
An exploration of the ways in which modern sports have spread from their Western roots to all corners of the globe. Could this be another form of cultural imperialism?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231100426/?tag=2022091-20
Guttmann, Allen was born on October 13, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Emile Jacob Guttmann and Jeanette Krulewich.
Bachelor, University Florida, 1953. Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1956. Doctor of Philosophy, University Minnesota, 1961.
From instructor to professor Amherst (Massachusetts) College, since 1959.
( Originally published in 1978, From Ritual to Record was...)
(Allen Guttmann is a professor of American Studies at Amhe...)
(Politics has always been an integral part of the Olympics...)
( An exploration of the ways in which modern sports have ...)
(Sports in America, particularly big-time collegiate and p...)
(Conservative Tradition In America, The, by Guttmann, Allen)
Corporal United States Army, 1953-1955.
Married Martha Britt Ellis, September 10, 1955 (divorced 1972). Children: Hans, Erika Britt. Married Doris Gertrud Bargen, November 11, 19974.