The sport of tennis has been played in one form or another for more than 800 years. It can trace its roots to games played by monks in the 12th century. Through the years the game has evolved from one in which the ball was struck with the hands to the modern game in which rackets are used to propel the ball in excess of 150 miles per hour. From the sport of the elite to the sport played by elite athletes, tennis has grown immensely in the past 135 years and it remains one of the few sporting pastimes thatis played extensively by people of all ages and all nationalities. The Historical Dictionary of Tennis presents a comprehensive history of the game through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, photos, and over 500 cross-referenceddictionary entries on places, teams, terminology, and people, including Arthur Ashe, Björn Borg, Don Budge, Chris Evert, Roger Federer, Billie Jean King, Rod Laver, Suzanne Lenglen, John McEnroe, Rafael Nadal, Martina Navratilova, and Bill Tilden. Appendixes of the members of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the Major Championships of Tennis, and the Olympic games are included. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about tennis.

Boxing is one of the oldest sports in the world, reaching back to the Ancient Greeks, although it has become popular only in the past century or so. But, in some ways, it is a rather complicated sport since – to avoid unnecessary harm – it has been endowed with rules to keep it clean, referees to see the rules are obeyed, and organizations to regulate the sport. Boxing was once largely amateur, although the professional bouts attracted the most attention, but now it is also an Olympic sport. And, over the years, there has been one champion after another who symbolized what boxing was all about, such Joe Louis, Mohammad Ali and Cassius Clay. Naturally, these champions are the focus of the Historical Dictionary of Boxing as well, and they have the biggest entries in the dictionary section, but they had to fight against someone and there are dozens and dozens of other boxers with smaller entries. More of these boxers come from the United States than elsewhere, but there are others from Europe, Asia and Latin America, and there are also entries on the major boxing countries as well. Plus entries on the rules, on the organizations, and on the technical terminology and jargon you have to know just to follow the bouts. The introduction provides a broad view of boxing’s history while the chronology traces events from 688 B.C. to 2012 A.D. Not all that much has been written on boxing that is not ephemeral, but much of that literature can be found in the bibliography. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of boxing.

Gridiron football or American football or just plain football is the most popular sport in the United States in the 21st century. Although attempts have been made to develop the sport outside North America, it is still predominantly a North American sport with similar games (but significant rules differences) played in the United States and Canada. The Historical Dictionary of Football covers the history of American football through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on both amateur (collegiate) and professional players, coaches, teams and executives from all eras. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of football.

The Olympic Movement began with the Ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Greece on the Peloponnesus peninsula at Olympia, Greece. It is not clear why the Greeks instituted this quadrennial celebration in the form of an athletic festival. The recorded history of the Ancient Olympic Games begins in 776 B.C., although it is suspected that the Games had been held for several centuries by that time. The Games were conducted as religious celebrations in honor of the god Zeus, and it is known that Olympia was a shrine to Zeus from about 1000 B.C. In modern time The Olympic Movement attempts to bring all the nations of the world together in a series of multisport festivals, the Olympic Games, seeking to use sport as a means to promote internationalism and peace. This fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of The Olympic Movement covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on the history, philosophy, and politics of the Olympics, major organizations, the various sports, the participating countries, and especially the athletes. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about The Olympic Movement.

The earliest forms of ice hockey developed over the centuries in numerous cold weather countries. In the 17th century, a game similar to hockey was played in Holland known as kolven. But the modern sport of ice hockey arose from the efforts of college students and British soldiers in eastern Canada in the mid-19th century. Since then, ice hockey has moved from neighborhood lakes and ponds to international competitions, such as the Summit Series and the Winter Olympics. Historical Dictionary of Ice Hockey traces the history and evolution of hockey in general, as well as individual topics, from their beginnings to the present, through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary has more than 600 cross-referenced entries on the players, general managers, managers, coaches, and referees, as well as entries for teams, leagues, rules, and statistical categories. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about ice hockey.

Wrestling as a legitimate contest is one of the oldest, if not the oldest form of sport. There are cave drawings depicting memorable matches in France, which are over 15,000 years old. Egyptian and Babylonian reliefs depict wrestling bouts where wrestlers are using most of the holds known to the modern-day sport. Wrestling was also a big part of ancient Greek literature and legend and historical records of sport indicate that wrestling under various sets of rules was contested at the Ancient Olympic Games in Greece. Today’s modern wrestling is a form of "sports entertainment" in which highly skilled athletes enact wrestling matches in such a way so that their opponents do not get hurt and the matches' endings are scripted (although the audience is not aware of the script). This Historical Dictionary of Wrestling covers the history of Wrestling through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on important amateur and professional wrestling, wrestling personalities, announcers, managers and promoters from all eras, and wrestling organizations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of Wrestling.

Loggats, kayles, quilles, skittles, half-bowl and ninepins were all early forms of games in which the goal was to knock down small standing objects from a distance by rolling or throwing another object at them. Archaeologists have found items from Egypt around 5200 B.C. that included small stone balls and narrow pins that were possibly used for a game. Additional research has disclosed that Polynesians played a similar game, using small elliptical balls and round flat stone disks, and, like modern-day bowling, a sixty-foot throwing distance. The Historical Dictionary of Bowling contains a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on both male and female bowlers, amateur and professional, bowling coaches, writers and other contributors to the sport of bowling; descriptions and results of major tournaments and terminology of the sport. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of Bowling.

Situated in the breathtaking Caucasus Mountains between the Black and the Caspian Seas, the country of Georgia sits at the crossroads between Europe and Asia; it has gone through more turbulence and change in the last twenty five years—the casting off of the Soviet regime, a civil war, two ethno-territorial conflicts, economic collapse, corruption, government inefficiency, and massive emigration—than most countries go through in 250 years. This small nation's strategic location at the crossroads of different civilizations has been a curse as well as a blessing. Once a battlefield between the ancient empires and the Christian and Islamic worlds, today it is caught between its NATO aspirations and its location in Russia’s backyard. Yet, despite all challenges and hardships, this resilient and ancient country, with thousands of years of winemaking, three-thousand years of statehood, and almost two millennia of Christianity, continues to survive and thrive. This book uses its chronology; glossary; introduction; appendixes; maps; bibliography; and over 900 hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, places, events and institutions, as well as significant political, economic, social, and cultural aspects to trace Georgia's history and predict its future. This historical dictionary is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Georgia.

The period from 1913 to 1933 is not often seen as a coherent entity in the history of the United States. It is more often viewed in terms of two distinct periods with the pre-war era of political engagement, idealism, and reform known as “progressivism” separated by World War I from the materialism, conservatism and disengagement of the “prosperous” 1920s. To many postwar observers and later historians, the entry of the United States into the European conflict in 1917 marked not just a dramatic departure in foreign relations, but also the end of an era of reform. This second edition of Historical Dictionary from the Great War to the Great Depression covers the history of this period through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about a vital period in U.S. history.

This reference book, containing the biographies of more than 1,100 notable British women from Boudicca to Barbara Castle, is an absorbing record of female achievement spanning some 2,000 years of British life. Most of the lives included are those of women whose work took them in some way before the public and who therefore played a direct and important role in broadening the horizons of women. Also included are women who influenced events in a more indirect way: the wives of kings and politicians, mistresses, ladies in waiting and society hostesses. Originally published as The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women, this newly re-worked edition includes key figures who have died in the last 20 years, such as The Queen Mother, Baroness Ryder of Warsaw, Elizabeth Jennings and Christina Foyle.