For more than a century the American farm, factory and frontier provided opportunities for physical workers to display their skill, win a bet, brag or perhaps just have some fun. Competitions that emphasized useful skills, like plowing, corn-husking, rock drilling, typesetting, and tree cutting, were common in the antebellum and post-Civil War periods, often drawing large crowds and the attention of sporting journals.
For many years conventional American sports occurred in the workplace. This may help explain why the nicknames of so many prominent collegiate or professional sporting teams--Cornhuskers, Lumberjacks, Miners, Cowboys, Packers and Boilermakers--are also the occupations of 19th century worker-athletes.
By examining the American experience with competitions among workers, this book provides a new understanding of the interrelated nature of occupation and leisure.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"recommended"-Choice.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Interest Age: From 18 years
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
47 photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Dicke: 14 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-7864-6784-6 (9780786467846)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Frank Zarnowski is a visiting professor of economics at Dartmouth College and was previously dean of the Graduate Program of Business at Mount St. Mary's College, Maryland. He has been a television sports commentator since 1983 and was an NBC analyst for both the 1992 and 2004 Olympic Games.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Bil Gilbert
Preface
Introduction: The Emergence of American Work-Sports
Part One: Worker Competitions in the 19th Century, 1840-1900
1.?Rock Breaking and Other Early Work-Sports
2.?"Put Out That Fire"-Firemen's Musters
3.?Worker Games for Slaves
4.?Setting Type, the Story of the Swifts
5.?Circus Leapers
6.?Ten Miles of Track in a Day
Part Two: Worker Competitions in the 20th Century, 1900-1940
7.?Rodeo
8.?Lumberjacks
9.?Rock Drilling and Steel Drivin' Men
10.?Of?ce Games
11.?Corn Husking and Other Agricultural Contests
Part Three: What Happened to Worker Competitions, 1940 to the Present
12.?Obsolete Work-Sports
13.?Modern Work-Sports
14.?Work-Sports in Popular Culture
15.?Why Work-Sports?
Appendices
1-U.S. Workers in Common Work-Sports Occupations, 1900
2-Sample Muster News Account
3-Numbers of U.S. Work-Sports Athletes, 2010
4-U.S. Occupational Sports, 2010
5-Wall Street Journal Front Page Work-Sports Stories, 1995-2005
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
