New Books in Sports

Episodes

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  Jon Mackenzie, "The Spectre of Pep: How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football Tactics" (Seven Dials, 2026) 16.08.2026 1h 38m

  The Spectre of Pep: How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football Tactics (Seven Dials, 2026) by Jon Mackenzie A spectre is haunting European football. Watch almost any game, no matter the level, and you will notice it. From inverted full backs to extreme high lines, the tactical threads of the match will eventually converge onto a singular point: Pep Guardiola. For some though, his near total dominance has come at the cost of the game itself, with modern football's protagonists caught between acknowledging Guardiola's greatness and wanting to evolve the sport beyond him. In The Spectre of Pep, acclaimed tactics writer Jon Mackenzie explores this contradiction. But this is much more than the story of just one man. After tracing Guardiola's ascendancy, displacing giants like Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, it examines how other elite coaches have fought to establish their own legacies within this landscape - including the likes of Jurgen Klopp, Roberto De Zerbi, Luis Enrique and Mikel Arteta. And with his time at Manchester City coming to an end - in a world where his influence is arguably diminishing - it also speculates on what the next generation of tactics may look like, and how Guardiola's legacy will be viewed in the future. If you want to understand football today, you have to understand the tactical spectre of Pep Guardiola. To do that, you need this book. Jon Mackenzie is a writer and presenter working for The Athletic. Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World History at Drury University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Julie Kliegman, "Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer" (HarperOne, 2026) 11.08.2026 45m

  Fifty years ago, tennis player Renée Richards made international headlines in her fight to compete in the women’s draw of the 1977 US Open—marking the first time a trans athlete sued to participate in professional sports in the gender category with which they identify. Renée eventually won her case. Though she lost in the first round of the singles tournament, she and her tennis partner made it to the finals in doubles, losing to Martina Navratilova and her partner. Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer (HarperOne, 2026) chronicles Richards’s extraordinary life, moving from her tumultuous upbringing in Queens, New York, to her career as a successful eye surgeon; her years as a star tennis player to her role as a transgender pioneer. Now in her nineties, Renée remains a complex figure: A person who changed the sports world forever yet questions the place of trans athletes in that world today. GLAAD award-nominated sports journalist Julie Kliegman deftly probes these contradictions, drawing on intimate interviews and offering critical reflections on what is at stake for athletes, fans, and the queer community today, at a time when trans participation in sports is more hotly contested—and condemned—than ever before. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Murat C. Yildiz, "The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul" (U Texas Press, 2026) 31.07.2026 1h 5m

  The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, sports scholars, and everyday people have offered competing narratives about the origins of modern sports in the late Ottoman Empire.  In The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul (University of Texas Press, 2026), Murat Cihan Yıldız tells the story of how Istanbul’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews—gymnastics teachers, football coaches, weightlifters, journalists, athletes, and fans—created a gendered and class-stratified civic project that promoted athletics as a source of fun, beauty, and moral education. Influenced by the emerging global vogue for organized sports, all boys from the expanding middle class of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial capital were expected to exercise and compete on the playing field in order to develop into moral men. Yet even as the embrace of modern athletics transcended ethnoreligious divisions, it did not erase them. Drawing on a wide range of archival research in multiple languages, Yıldız shows that sportsmen created new communal boundaries in team affiliations, fandom, and sports media. Adeptly reconstructing Istanbul’s imperial culture as it was experienced more than a century ago, The Ottoman World of Sports recovers a lived imperial culture whose defining features were shaped by its multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual sportsmen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Toby Miller and Joan Pedro Carañana, "Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They?" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) 26.07.2026 44m

  Just how much damage is sport doing to the planet? In Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) Toby Miller, Profesor Distinguido at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico and Joan Pedro Carañana, Associate Professor of Journalism at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain examine the ecological impact of major sporting events. Using case studies of The World Cup, The Olympics, The America’s Cup and Formula One, the book demonstrates the vast range of economic, social, cultural and climate impacts of these mega-events. Offering a wide ranging and compelling critique, along with consideration of resistance to carbon sports, the book is essential reading for everyone with interested in whether global sporting spectacles can really be sustainable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Scott Reich, "One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game" (Compass Rose, 2026) 30.06.2026 54m

  On a crisp September afternoon in 1917, as the country waged war and the national pastime faced questions about its purpose, baseball paused to reconsider what it stood for. At Fenway Park, the game's greatest stars-many of them rivals, some near the end of their careers, others just emerging-took the field together in an exhibition played not for standings or championships, but for a colleague who had died, and for a cause larger than the game itself. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Connie Mack, and more. One newspaper called it "the greatest baseball show on earth." What unfolded that day was more than a benefit or a curiosity. It was a moment of recognition among players, fans, and the sport's leaders that baseball could be something more than competition. It could be a shared stage. A public trust. A civic ritual capable of carrying the weight of a nation. Listen to our interview about One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game (Compass Rose, 2026) Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Larry Atkins, "Foul or Fair? Ethical and Social Issues in Sports" (McFarland, 2024) 28.06.2026 50m

  There's more to sports than what occurs during games. Check your social media, listen to sports talk radio, or watch ESPN--there are daily stories of social issues in sports regarding concussions, playing hurt, gambling, Olympics and politics, athletes as social activists, paying college athletes, recruiting violations, academics, youth sports, diversity and gender issues, hazing, athletes' mental health, disabled athletes' rights, sportsmanship, and media coverage. How do these issues affect athletes, fans, and society? Written equally for casual and hardcore fans, Foul or Fair? Ethical and Social Issues in Sports (McFarland, 2024) analyzes social and ethical issues in sports in a lively, journalistic manner, combining quotes from writers, broadcasters, athletes, coaches and others with the author's observations. It shows pros and cons of how sports affect our daily lives and society. While sports inspire and excite us and lead to social change like the civil rights movement, Title IX, and rights of disabled people, controversies surrounding sports can be divisive even as sports work as a uniting factor in society. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  David Faflik, "Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026) 27.05.2026 41m

  A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and playWhen outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 1974, he brought with him a toy gorilla named Mighty Joe Young that became the team’s unofficial mascot for several players and many in the local press. This seemingly innocent stuffed animal was introduced within a baseball team notorious for its stubborn discrimination, and during a particularly fraught era of racial discord in Boston. That June, after years of activism from the city’s Black community, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that Boston must address the segregation of its schools through redistricting and busing. The ensuing racial animus to these policies led some of the city’s white residents to throw bananas and chant monkey sounds at African American students as they integrated the predominantly white South Boston High School. In this agitated atmosphere, cultural symbols like the Red Sox’s Mighty Joe Young mirrored and amplified the heightened racial tensions of Boston’s busing crisis.Situated at the intersection of US cultural and social history, Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation (U Massachusetts Press, 2026) examines the surprising ties in 1970s Boston between the racial segregation of the city’s schools and the racial controversies expressed on and off the field of “Red Sox Nation.” “I found out in the black community why they don’t come out [to Fenway Park],” explained Black player Reggie Smith of his experiences with the Red Sox and the city during this period. “The team was the last to get Black players, and some of the things I hear out in the stands make me sick.” To understand these connections, Faflik erases the lines between politics and sport, which routinely blurred in a city suffused with an anti-Black racism that was both deceptively subtle and fiercely overt.Drawing upon deep archival research from sources that have largely been ignored, such as the Black press of the time, Faflik offers a carefully nuanced portrait of Boston’s cultural life at a pivotal moment in the city’s history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Tom Meschery, "The Mad Manchurian: From the Internment Camps of Tokyo to the Hardwood Courts of the NBA" (Coffeetown Press, 2025) 19.05.2026 1h 3m

  I was born in Harbin, Manchuria, (later China), in 1938. At the outbreak of the Second World War my mother, sister and I, along with other non-combatants of the Allied countries, were taken by the Japanese to an internment camp in Tokyo where we would remain four year--to the end of the war. My mother's recollection is that I was a sickly child. By the time I arrived in Japan, according to her, I had survived diphtheria, whooping cough, yellow fever, smallpox and tuberculosis. Such afflictions, to my mother's astonishment, did not keep me from growing to my adult height of 6'6" and muscular weight of 220 pounds. Nor did they keep me from being strong enough and skillful enough to become a professional basketball player and play 10 years for the National Basketball Association, as the first ethnic Russian and immigrant to do so, and the first to be named to an All-Star team. Listen to this interview about The Mad Manchurian: From the Internment Camps of Tokyo to the Hardwood Courts of the NBA (Coffeetown Press, 2025). Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Nicholas Thompson, "The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports" (Random House, 2025) 04.05.2026 53m

  In this episode, Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, and University of Puerto Rico professors Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Maritza Stanchich, discuss something deceptively simple: putting one foot in front of the other—and how that act can reshape the way we perceive the world. Seizing an idea from Steve Prefontaine—that running can be an act of creation—this episode considers how running can extend beyond the physical and extend into memory, relationships, and inheritance. They discuss how running can be a way of thinking, a way of loving, and, at times, a way of understanding who we are. The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports (Harper/Random House, 2025). Nuevos Horizontes is the podcast of the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Quotes, organizations, books, athletes and scholars mentioned in this conversation: Tony Ruiz, Central Park Track Club “There’s a lot you can get from Tony Ruiz’s life that you can’t get through mine.” -Nicholas Thompson “The dignity of enduring the complexity of my father.…she plays a major role in shaping me.” -Nicholas Thompson, about his mother “It’s really hard when people are still alive to write these kinds of books. It takes a lot of courage on everyone’s part.” -Maritza Stanchich “Only the disciplined ones in life are free.” -Eliud Kipchoge Steve Prefontaine W. Scott Thompson Puerto Rican boycott of 1980 Olympic Games Bobbi Gibb Yaelis Carmona, University of Puerto Rico  Biomechanics Falmouth Road Race Paul Souza, Wheaton College Souzapalooza, East Falmouth music festival Phil (PJ) Alessi, North Attleboro Bill Jennings, Brockton High School Track Coach William McKay, Falmouth High School English Teacher Mario Watts Sergei Bubka Matt Booth Joe Gohring Phillips Academy Falmouth High SchoolEric Gethers Falmouth Road Race Northfield Mount Hermon Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism Frank Shorter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Shameem Black, "Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions" (Columbia UP, 2023) 23.04.2026 46m

  Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer. But as yoga has gone global, its cultural meanings have spiraled far and wide. In Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Shameem Black travels into unexpected realms of popular culture in English from India, its diaspora, and the West to explore and critique yoga as an exercise in cultural power. Drawing on her own experience and her readings of political spectacles, yoga murder mysteries, court cases, art installations, and digital media, Dr. Black shows how yoga’s imaginative power supports diverse political and cultural ends. Although many cultural practices in today’s India exemplify “culture wars” between liberal and conservative agendas, Flexible India argues that visions of yoga offer a “culture peace” that conceals, without resolving, such tensions. This flexibility allows states, corporations, and individuals to think of themselves as welcoming and tolerant while still, in many cases, supporting practices that make minority populations increasingly vulnerable. However, as Dr. Black shows, yoga can also be imagined in ways that offer new tools for critiquing hierarchical structures of power and race, Hindu nationalism, cultural appropriation, and self-help capitalism. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Adam Henig, "Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 20.04.2026 49m

  When twenty-three-year-old Ron LeFlore played his first organized baseball game, it was in a yard at the State Prison of Southern Michigan where he was serving five to fifteen years for armed robbery. An extraordinary athlete, the Detroit native had luck on his side: his coach, a convicted felon, had connections to the Detroit Tigers. Within three-and-a-half years, Ron went from a prison inmate to a Tiger centerfielder. In Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore (Bloomsbury, 2026), Adam Henig tells for the first time in full the unbelievable life and career of Ron LeFlore. Blessed with blinding speed and a powerful swing, Ron shed his jailbird past to become one of the game's premiere hitters and its most dangerous base stealer during the latter half of the 1970s. His rags-to-riches life story became a bestselling book and a made-for-television movie starring actor LeVar Burton, fresh from his performance in Roots. But the good times did not last. Less than a decade after making his Major League debut, Ron was finished with baseball. Baseball's Outcast is not just another book about the rise and fall of a troubled athlete. Henig goes deeper, tracing the star player's family roots, exploring the segregated world that Ron was raised in, examining the criminal justice system he was subjected to, and revealing how childhood trauma shaped his success and downfall. Filled with insight from Ron himself, as well as from former teammates, coaches, front-office personnel, inmates, childhood friends, and relatives, Baseball's Outcast provides unprecedented access into Ron's life story and the obstacles he faced every step of the way. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Jerry West and Jonathan Coleman, "West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life" (Little, Brown and Co, 2011) 16.04.2026 1h 40m

  He is one of basketball's towering figures: "Mr. Clutch," who mesmerized his opponents and fans. The coach who began the Lakers' resurgence in the 1970s. The general manager who helped bring "Showtime" to Los Angeles, creating a championship-winning force that continues to this day. Now, for the first time, the legendary Jerry West tells his story -- from his tough childhood in West Virginia, to his unbelievable college success at West Virginia University, his 40-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, and his relationships with NBA legends like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kobe Bryant. Unsparing in its self-assessment and honesty, West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life (Little, Brown and Co, 2011) is far more than a sports memoir: it is a profound confession and a magnificent inspiration. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Pavel Brunssen, "The Making of 'Jew Clubs': Performing Jewishness and Antisemitism in European Football and Fan Cultures" (Indiana UP, 2025) 09.04.2026 1h 16m

  Today we are joined by Pavel Brunssen, a Research Associate and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University and author of The Making of “Jew Clubs”: Performing Jewishness and Antisemitism in European Football and Fan Cultures (Indiana UP, 2025). In our conversation, we discussed the difference between Jewish clubs and “Jew Clubs,” the overlapping of antisemitism and philosemitism in football fan cultures, the language politics of clubs and supporter’s organizations, and the inability to completely master the unmastered past. In The Making of “Jew Clubs,” Brunssen looks at four “Jew Clubs” – clubs that have been identified by either the organization, their supporters, or their opponents as having a Jewish identity. He focuses on Bayern Munich FC, FK Austria Vienna, Ajax Amsterdam, and Tottenham Hotspur. Each provides an angle into his deeply researched and theoretical discussion of how a club can become identified with Jewish identity, without necessarily having a significant number of Jewish members or supporters or even having identified as Jewish. His investigation into this phenomenon provides him a space to understand how postwar Europeans have attempted to come to terms with the unmasterable past of antisemitism and the Holocaust. In his chapter on Bayern Munich FC, Brunssen examines a club that has self-consciously adopted a “Jew Club” identity as a way of working through the club’s complicated wartime history. Bayern Munich’s administration and fans each promote the club’s Jewish heritage, particularly expressed through the former president Kurt Landauer, as a way of creating a space between their association and German football’s Nazi past. For the club, their celebration of Landauer demonstrates their cosmopolitan values, but for fans Landauer’s legacy offers a space to critique the club’s current engagement with organizations such as the Qatari government. FK Austria Vienna has long been associated with Jewishness because of the club’s location in Vienna, its association with café culture, and its “modern” style of play. Today the club mobilizes its “Jew Club” identity to differentiate itself from its rival Rapid Vienna and to repudiate the actions of a radical right segment of its own supporters. Ajax Amsterdam became a “Jew Club” in response to the taunts of their rivals from Rotterdam – Feyenoord. Ajax supporters became “Super Jews” in response and the club’s carnivalesque stadium atmosphere creates a “virtual Jewish space.” The fandom’s philosemitism both opens the door for Jewish agency, including of fans from Israel, and normalizes antisemitic chants from rival fans. Tottenham Hotspur might be the most infamous “Jew Club” in the world. Its identity emerged in the 1930s and by the 1970s, the club’s supporters adopted the Y-word as a form of linguistic reclamation. In becoming the Y-army, they take back the powerful taboo of the slur from their opponents, but Brunssen questions whether such linguistic triangulation works and points to the club’s ongoing efforts to police against the Y-word in public forums. Brunssen’s work is fascinating, well researched, and theoretically rigorous. It will be of interest to scholars interested in antisemitism, football, and memory culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Jordan Treske, "Building the Milwaukee Bucks: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, and the Rapid Rise of an NBA Franchise, 1968-1975" (McFarland, 2025) 08.04.2026 1h 10m

  In three short years, the Milwaukee Bucks went from merely an idea to NBA champions. What started as a quest by Marvin Fishman and eventually Wesley Pavalon to get Milwaukee back in the big leagues became something bigger than they could have imagined. They attracted a hard-working coach in Larry Costello, a pioneer in Wayne Embry and some of the biggest talents in the game of basketball with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson. The pieces fell into place for a franchise that asserted themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the NBA. Building the Milwaukee Bucks: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, and the Rapid Rise of an NBA Franchise, 1968-1975 (McFarland, 2025) covers the unique formation of the NBA franchise that helped restore the image of the city of Milwaukee amid civil unrest and the departure of Major League Baseball as well as why Abdul-Jabbar never found comfort being the face of the Bucks while living in Milwaukee. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Robert Parish with Jake Uitti, "The Chief: The Story of the Boston Celtics’ Most Enigmatic Icon" (Triumph, 2026) 02.04.2026 57m

  A memoir of basketball, dedication, and longevity from Boston Celtics legend Robert Parish Growing up in the heart of Louisiana, Robert Parish and his three younger siblings played baseball, football, and tennis―but never basketball. Still, by seventh grade, Parish stood 6'6" and couldn't escape the attention of Coleman Kidd, the junior high basketball coach who saw potential before Parish could see it in himself. And though he was the worst player on the team that first season―handed the last jersey left, No. 00―it would become the number that now hangs in the Boston Garden rafters. In The Chief: The Story of the Boston Celtics’ Most Enigmatic Icon (Triumph, 2026), the famously reserved Parish opens up for the first time about the full scope of his life―from attending a predominantly white high school during the uneasy years of integration to becoming the anchor of one of the greatest teams in NBA history. With honesty, humility, and plenty of dry humor, Parish reflects on his start with the Golden State Warriors and his trade to Boston, the years alongside Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, the Celtics’ epic rivalries of the 1980s, and the later years with the Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls, finally walking away from the game on his own terms. Insightful, introspective, and powerful, The Chief is a rare look into the life of an NBA giant who always let his game do the talking―until now. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Alan McDougall, "Dreams and Songs to Sing: A People's History of Liverpool FC from Shankly to Klopp" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 24.03.2026 1h 5m

  Today we are joined by Alan McDougall, Professor of History at the University of Guelph, and the author of Dreams and Songs To Sing: A People’s History of Liverpool F.C. From Shankly to Klopp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025). In our conversation, we discussed the rise of Liverpool as a global football club, the crises that beset the club during the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, and the necessity of inherent optimism of fandom in contemporary sports. In Dreams and Songs to Sing, McDougall writes the history of Liverpool FC from Shankly to Klopp in a register that will appeal to both popular and scholarly readers. McDougall is a lifelong Liverpool supporter, and he is careful to point out where his connections to the club and its fandom might shade his examination, but he also shows how those same affective connections allow him to a unique entry point into issues only visible to fans and that supports can be even more critical than a detached observer. This is especially true in his investigation of Heysel and Hillsborough. The book proceeds roughly chronologically. The book’s early chapters examine the club’s connection to Liverpool’s working-class district 4 and to their Anfield home ground. He pays special attention to the supporter’s end - the notorious Kop. Using oral history interviews, McDougall illustrates the exceptional pull of the stadium to both local and global fans. The heart of the book is its engaging, thick description of the club’s history during the Shankly era. McDougall shows that not only was Shankly a very successful manager, and quite funny, but that he ran the club with a sense of Liverpool’s local identity. A man who arrived at the right time – he benefitted from Liverpool’s growing global reputation; Beatlemania gave the city a sound but players and fans rubbed shoulders with comics, musicians, and poets. Shankly embodied the very local socialist, working-class attitudes of the majority of club supporters. His retirement shook the whole city. McDougall uses a family repository of letters to show how people from around the city, the country, and the world wrote to him to express sadness at him leaving and to wish him luck. McDougall’s account might be from an insider, but his analysis does not shy away from shining a light on the difficult social politics that accompanied the club’s enormous success on the field. European Cup victories sit alongside the deadly hooligan violence at Heysel. Black players like Howard Gayle and John Barnes face racism from the club’s supporters. The club first ignores and then undervalues the rise of women’s football. McDougall’s history ends in the Klopp era – perhaps a mercy to Liverpool fans! He shows how the contemporary club embodies the idea of a global club with a local heart. The international ownership of the club has successfully navigated the rise of the Premier League and the increasing commercialization of European football, but local supporters have been innovative at creating a culture of resistance to changes that could undermine the glocal identity of Liverpool. Klopp symbolized this new football club: cosmopolitan, emotional, forward, successful. Compelling and hard to put down, McDougall’s Dreams and Songs to Sing will appeal to all readers of sports history. It will be of particular interest to Liverpool supporters and football fanatics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Michael James Roberts et al., "Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing" (San Diego State UP, 2024) 05.03.2026 1h

  In Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing (San Diego State UP, 2024),  Michael James Roberts, Kristin Lawler, and David P. Cline take the widespread participation of skateboarders and surfers in the Black Lives Matter movement as a catalyst to reconsider the significance of the cultural politics of surfing and skateboarding. It is the first academic volume to bring together leading scholars in the areas of both surfing and skateboarding studies. This episode also invites Jarret Rose to discuss his contribution to this anthology. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University, where he specializes in the cultural and interpretive study of space, behavior, and identity. His scholarship examines how designed environments shape social interaction, connectedness, and moral life across diverse settings. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His current research projects include the study of escape rooms as emotion-structured environments, temporal urban environments in rural historical towns, student experiences of hanging out and being at home while at college and university, and a more recent study on the making of rodeo. To learn more about his work, visit his personal website, Google Scholar profile, or connect with him on Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social) or Twitter/X (@ProfessorJohnst). He can also be reached directly by email. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Ofer Idels, "Embodying the Revolution: The Hebrew Experience and the Globalization of Modern Sports in Interwar Palestine" (Rutgers UP, 2025) 04.03.2026 43m

  Join Rabbi Marc Katz for a powerful and unexpected conversation with historian Ofer Idels author of Embodying the Revolution: The Hebrew Experience and the Globalization of Modern Sports in Interwar Palestine (Rutgers UP, 2025). This episode dives into a fascinating paradox at the heart of modern Jewish history:Why did Zionism—especially during the era of “muscular Judaism”—remain deeply ambivalent about sports? Drawing on rich archival research and contemporary theory, Idels reveals a surprising story of Mandate Palestine, where athletes rarely became national heroes and sports never fully transformed into symbols of collective pride. This is more than a history of sports—it’s a conversation about selfhood, revolution, ideology, and the compromises embedded in every national dream. If you care about Zionism, Jewish culture, modern identity, or the meaning of revolution, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Ofer Idels is the Jenny Belzberg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary, Canada. He is the author of Zionism: Emotions, Language and Experience. Rabbi Marc Katz is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  Seth S. Tannenbaum, "Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark" (U Illinois Press, 2026) 03.03.2026 1h

  Celebrated as a democratic space for all Americans, the major league ballpark in fact privileged the middle- and upper-class white male fan while tacitly marginalizing poor urban residents and people of color. Seth S. Tannenbaum examines how the game’s economically and socially stratified system reflected changing understandings of urban space, inclusion, and the body politic. Major League Baseball owners and executives masked exclusion and division by touting the game’s accessibility and instituting few overtly discriminatory policies. Affluent white males enjoyed a comfortable, safe space that reinforced their status as the prototypical American citizen. At the same time, ballparks relocated in response to how these favored fans felt about cities. Tannenbaum traces this journey from the urban locales of the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium through the suburban-oriented Dodger Stadium and Houston Astrodome to the cloistered fantasy of city life offered by Camden Yards. As he shows, owners’ pursuit of greater profits incorporated existing barriers that helped shape the structure of modern parks. A revealing social history, Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark (U Illinois Press, 2026) revises the persistent myth of the ballpark as an egalitarian melting pot. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports
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  David M. Henkin, "Out of the Ballpark: How to Think about Baseball" (Oxford UP, 2026) 18.02.2026 1h 3m

  All over the world, masses of people watch, follow, document, and obsess over baseball. Everything remarkable about the impact of baseball derives from the game's history and cultural status as events that draw people together in these ways. Understanding baseball as a cultural phenomenon is therefore less a matter of mastering the vocabulary of the game or merely recollecting its iconic stadiums, players, and stats. While all those details compel insiders and inspire fans, baseball's peculiar and persistent appeal can only be understood by adopting a wider lens. It requires reckoning with the history of structured competition. The classic backyard game of catch between a father and son draws meaning from its associations with the organized sport and its history. The challenge lies less in finding one perfect spot to look, but rather in identifying the many different places where baseball has accumulated significance. Out of the Ballpark: How to Think about Baseball (Oxford University Press, 2026) reconsiders the character, meaning, and delights of the game by exploring both baseball's unusual features and the sport's many resonances with other aspects of modern life. To this end, it abandons several assumptions and mythologies that underlie most approaches to histories of baseball: that it is unique among sports and fundamentally different from other kinds of entertainment; that it is specific to the United States; that it has changed fundamentally in recent years; and that the keys to understanding it lie primarily in examining what happens on the field of play. Instead, David M. Henkin moves across time and space to examine baseball's history since the nineteenth century and beyond US borders. He takes readers inside the structures of clubs and leagues, interprets the sacred scripture of rulebooks, and illuminates some of baseball's rites and rituals that are often associated with honor and manhood. He charts baseball's significance along the routes of American and Japanese imperial expansion and the shifting maps of race and ethnicity in the US. Baseball is found at negotiating tables that pit capital against labor and in pivotal moments in the history of mass media. Here, we are shown how baseball might offer a complex and capacious space for thinking about such things as spectatorship, success, community, order, and contingency in the modern world. David M. Henkin is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught courses on society and culture in nineteenth-century America for close to three decades. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports