The 100 Greatest Jews in Sports takes the greatest Jewish athletes in all major sports from the past eleven decades and ranks them against each other, using a limited scope and quantitative criteria. Each decade has seen someone new emerge as the greatest Jewish athlete, from boxer Abe Attell to baseballs' Sandy Koufax and Ken Holtzman, to golf's Amy Alcott, to footballs' Harris Barton. Sports profiled include baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, auto racing, boxing, soccer, football, swimming, and many others. Silverman takes a scholarly approach to ensure reliability and validity of the statistics given. The author identified the most common categories of statistics in which the highest paid athletes in all sports had excelled, and he assigned numeric values to reflect the performance categories. That provided a proportional representation of the most important individual accomplishments in sports. By applying those numbers to the records of selected athletes, each was ranked against the other. Additionally, the author asked selected experts of each sport to perform the same ranking with no specific criteria, and the results were the same. Filled with historic photographs of the athletes profiled, and interspersed with interesting tidbits of each athlete's personal life and career, this book is certain to be of interest to the casual to serious sports enthusiast alike.

"Pick a sport -- baseball, professional or college football or basketball, horse racing, boxing, or tennis -- and in every case New York has consistently had front-row seats for every major development and many of the most memorable events in sports history." -- from the introduction It's every New York sports fan's dream: a chance to analyze, debate, and rank the top 100 sports events in New York history. A list to settle all arguments. What would you choose? First of all, where to start? Babe Ruth hitting the first home run in Yankee Stadium? Arthur Ashe winning the first U.S. Open? Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden? Over the years, New York has been at the center of seemingly every major sporting event. From the integration of baseball to the heyday of boxing and horse racing to the rise of professional sports -- it all happened in New York. The journalist Stuart Miller, a native New Yorker and sportswriter, guides us through the pivotal events with illuminating analysis and colorful detail. Based on extensive research, this richly illustrated book is filled with vivid and authoritative prose. Highlights include: * Willie Mays makes "the Catch" in the 1954 World Series * Jimmy Connors turns back the clock at the 1991 U.S. Open * Willis Reed rescues the Knicks in the 1970 NBA Finals * Joe Namath and the Jets win the 1968 AFL Championship * Mookie Wilson's slow grounder to first is a Mets miracle in the 1986 World Series All of the celebrated franchises are here, from the Yankees and the Mets to the Knicks and the Giants, as well as sports ranging from horse racing to tennis to boxing to the New York City Marathon. There are additional lists and analyses, such as "On the Road: The Top 25," featuring events such as Bucky Dent's 1978 homer over the Green Monster in Fenway Park. "Fearsome Foes" highlights epic performances by the opposition, like Michael Jordan's 55-point night at the Garden in 1992. Miller also gives us the bad side of sports, in "Worst Days," such as when Benny Paret died in the ring at the hands of Emile Griffith. Exhaustively researched and endlessly entertaining, The 100 Greatest Days in New York Sports is a book destined to be on the shelf of every New York -- and every American -- sports fan.

Muscling in on New Worlds brings together a dynamic new collection of studies that approach sport as a window into Jewish identity formation in the Americas. Articles address football/soccer, yoga, boxing, and other sports as crucial points of Jewish interaction with other communities and as vehicles for reconciling the legacy of immigration and Jewish distinctiveness in new world national and regional contexts.

When you think of famous Jews, sports may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But from Sandy Koufax to Mark Spitz, Jews have made tremendous contributions to the history of sports. The Horvitzs have created a logical ranking system that uses hard statistical evidence to identify the 100 greatest Jewish athletes of all time. Drawing on their academic backgrounds and expert sports knowledge, the authors bring us a proven scientific framework for objectively comparing athletes across various sports, including: Football, Baseball, Boxing, Tennis, Golf, plus many others! Features include: Little-known interviews with sports heroes of the past and present; Nearly 200 rare photographs throughout; Fascinating anecdotes that bring your favorite athletes to life.

The Routledge Handbook to Contemporary Jewish Cultures explores the diversity of Jewish cultures and ways of investigating them, presenting the different methodologies, arguments and challenges within the discipline. Divided into themed sections, this book considers in turn: How the individual terms "Jewish" and "culture" are defined, looking at perspectives from Anthropology, Music, Literary Studies, Sociology, Religious Studies, History, Art History, and Film, Television, and New Media Studies. How Jewish cultures are theorized, looking at key themes regarding power, textuality, religion/secularity, memory, bodies, space and place, and networks. Case studies in contemporary Jewish cultures. With essays by leading scholars in Jewish culture, this book offers a clear overview of the field and offers exciting new directions for the future.

For reference librarians and researchers seeking information on sports and fitness, this guide is an important first stop. For collection development specialists, it is an invaluable selection guide. Allen describes and evaluates over 1,000 information sources on the complete spectrum of sports: from basketball, football, and hockey to figure skating, table tennis, and weight training. Focusing on English-language works published between 1990 and the present, the guide thoroughly covers traditional reference sources, such as encyclopedias and bibliographies, along with instructional sources in print formats, online databases, and Web sites. To enable users in search of information on specific sports or fitness activities, chapters are organized thematically, according to broad- type aquatic sports, nautical sports, precision and accuracy, racket sports, ice and snow sports, ball sports, cycling, and so on, with subcategories for such individual sports as soccer, golf, and yoga. Within these categories, works are further organized by type: reference, instructional, and Web sites.

A Companion to American Sport History presents a collection of original essays that represent the first comprehensive analysis of scholarship relating to the growing field of American sport history. Presents the first complete analysis of the scholarship relating to the academic history of American sport Features contributions from many of the finest scholars working in the field of American sport history Includes coverage of the chronology of sports from colonial times to the present day, including major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, boxing, golf, motor racing, tennis, and track and field Addresses the relationship of sports to urbanization, technology, gender, race, social class, and genres such as sports biography Awarded 2015 Best Anthology from the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH)

Long before Hank Greenberg earned recognition as baseball's greatest Jewish player, Jews had developed a unique, and very close, relationship with the American pastime. In the late nineteenth century, as both the American Jewish population and baseball's popularity grew rapidly, baseball became an avenue by which Jewish immigrants could assimilate into American culture. Beyond the men (and, later, women) on the field, in the dugout, and at the front office, the Jewish community produced a huge base of fans and students of the game. This important book examines the interrelated histories of baseball and American Jews to 1948--the year Israel was established, the first full season that both major leagues were integrated, and the summer that Hank Greenberg retired. Covered are the many players, from Pike to Greenberg, as well as the managers, owners, executives, writers, statisticians, manufacturers and others who helped forge a bond between baseball and an emerging Jewish culture in America. Key reasons for baseball's early appeal to Jews are examined, including cultural assimilation, rebellion against perceived Old World sensibilities, and intellectual and philosophical ties to existing Jewish traditions. The authors also clearly demonstrate how both Jews and baseball have benefited from their relationship.

"With over 57,000 entries, this two-volume set is the most comprehensive non-electronic, non-database, print bibliography on any American sport. Represented here are books and monographs, scholarly papers, government documents, doctoral dissertations, masters' theses, poetry and fiction, novels, pro team yearbooks, college and professional All-Star Game and World Series programs, commercially produced yearbooks, and periodical and journal articles"--Provided by publisher.