City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports.

City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports. Reiss, Steven A. City Games: The Evolution of American UrbanSociety and the Rise of Sports. Urbana and Chicago: University ofIllinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP), is a major American university press and part of the University of Illinois. OverviewAccording to the UIP's website: , 1989. Pp. xii, 332. Tables, maps, illustrations, index. City Games is a very badly written book about a very interestingtopic: the relationships between the development of American cities andthe development of organized sports. The book is valuable to anyonetrying to understand or teach American sports history because it is acompendium of most of the important developments in American spectatorsports. It has the added value Added value in financial analysis of shares is to be distinguished from value added. Used as a measure of shareholder value, calculated using the formula:Added Value = Sales - Purchases - Labour Costs - Capital Costs that the sports are discussedparticularly as they have related to urban ethnic groups. Steven A. Reiss, who is professor of history at NortheasternIllinois University Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) is a public state university located in the North Park community area of Chicago, Illinois. Northeastern Illinois University serves commuter students in the Chicago metropolitan area. and editor of the Journal of Sport History, hasorganized the book around important questions in sports history. Thefocus of his discussion is on the development of cities and urbanculture between 1870 and 1960. In that period, Reiss reviews in detailthe relationship of sports to urban social structure, to racial andethnic groups, and to urban spaces. Organized youth sports, thedevelopment and commercialization of professional spectator sports, andthe relationship of sports to urban politics, organized crime, andAmerican business are all discussed at length. A final chapter examinessports in what Reiss calls "the Suburban Era" from 1945 to1980. There is, however, little clear analysis of any of the questionsthe book covers. Reiss takes little care to portray human beings,individually or in the aggregate, who are subject to human passions,desires, habits, abilities or limitations and who actually lived in thepast Reiss covers. The writing is imprecise, repetitious rep��e��ti��tious?adj.Filled with repetition, especially needless or tedious repetition.repe��ti , and full ofvague, ill-defined phrases and neologisms--for examples, "zone ofemergence" is used a multitude of times, "sports" and"sport" are used interchangeably, and the following sentenceopens a concluding paragraph: "Urbanization's impact uponsport in the radial city was particularly crucial because of changingspatial relations." Reiss expects his often misused words to carry substantivehistorical content or precise analytical meaning, but he rarely providesthe content or the meaning. In his conclusion, for example, he writes:"The importance of athletics to city folk was stressed by thewidely accepted positive sporting creed which by the turn of the centuryhad become the conventional wisdom. Athletics and, in particular, teamsports were regarded as symbols of democracy and as integrativemechanisms which taught traditional small-town values to urban youth.Many agencies tried to implement the ideology to Americanize andassimilate urban boys, especially impoverished second-generationinner-city lads ..." There is no further definition of"sporting creed" or "ideology," no explication ex��pli��cate?tr.v. ex��pli��cat��ed, ex��pli��cat��ing, ex��pli��catesTo make clear the meaning of; explain. See Synonyms at explain.[Latin explic of"integrative mechanisms" or "assimilation," and nodescription of any "agencies" or of the real people who"stressed" or "regarded," It is a shame a book sofull of potential interest, which brings up so much of importance aboutits subject, was so inadequately edited. James Oliver Robertson Department of History The University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut is the State of Connecticut's land-grant university. It was founded in 1881 and serves more than 27,000 students on its six campuses, including more than 9,000 graduate students in multiple programs.UConn's main campus is in Storrs, Connecticut.