Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Prowess--extraordinary skill and ability, especially in sports--has always been important to Americans, even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nancy L. Struna explores the significance, meaning, and structure of competitive matches and displays of physical prowess for both men and women in colonial culture. Engrossingly written for the general reader as well as sport and leisure historians, People of Prowess is a pioneering work that explores a rarely examined
area of colonial history and society.
Synopsis
Americans have revered prowess in sports going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nancy L. Struna explores the significance, meaning, and structure of competitive matches and displays of physical prowess for both men and women in colonial culture. Engrossingly written for the general reader as well as sport and leisure historians, People of Prowess is a pioneering work that explores a rarely examined area of colonial history and society.
Table of Contents
Sport in the old world -- A grand scheme -- Change and persistence in colonial sporting life, 1620s-1670s -- Sports and colonial popular culture, 1680s-1730s -- Sport and rank making in the Chesapeake -- Mid-eighteenth-century sporting styles -- Taverns and sports -- Upper- and middle-rank "leisure" and sports -- Epilogue : people of prowess.