Synopses & Reviews
If the 1930s was the Swing Era, then the years from 1937 on might well be called the Jump Era. That summer Count Basie recorded Jumping at the Woodside, and suddenly jump tunes seemed to be everywhere. Along with the bouncy beat came a new dance step--the high-flying aerials of the jitterbuggers--and the basketball games that took place in the dance halls of African America became faster, higher, and flashier. Duke Ellington and a cast of hundreds put the buoyant spirit of the era on stage with their 1941 musical revue, Jump for Joy, a title that captured the momentum and direction of the new culture of exuberance. Several high-profile public victories accompanied this increasing optimism: the spectacular successes of African American athletes at the 1936 Olympics, the 1937 union victory of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Joe Louis's 1937 and 1938 heavyweight championship fights. For the first time in history, black Americans emerged as cultural heroes and ambassadors, and many felt a new pride in citizenship. In this book, Gena Caponi-Tabery chronicles these triumphs and shows how they shaped American music, sports, and dance of the 1930s and beyond. But she also shows how they emboldened ordinary African Americans to push for greater recognition and civil liberties--how cultural change preceded and catalyzed political action. Tracing the path of one symbolic gesture--the jump--across cultural and disciplinary boundaries, Caponi-Tabery provides a unique political, intellectual, and artistic analysis of the years immediately preceding World War II.
Review
"A delightful read."and#8212;CHOICE
Synopsis
This compelling blend of biography and cultural history depicts five important yet nearly forgotten athletes from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who had a transformative effect on their sports and on the evolution of sports in general. Tom Stevens was the first man to ride a bicycle, and#8220;a high wheeler,and#8221; around the world (1884-87). Fanny Bullock Workman completed seven expeditions into the Himalayas between 1898 and 1912. Bill Reid, a Harvard football coach and one of the gameand#8217;s first professionals, played a key role in saving the sport from a national movement to abolish it in 1905. May Sutton became the National Champion of womenand#8217;s tennis at the age of sixteen and was the first American woman to triumph at Wimbledon (1905). Barney Oldfield was an early champion of motor car racing (1902) whose aggressive pursuit of crowd appeal and and#8220;outlawand#8221; style rankled his competitors but won him many races.
Although they participated in different sports, these five athletes were central to the evolution of sports from casual leisure recreations into serious, commercialized competitions and recognizable approximations of our sports today. Game Faces tracks the powerful influence of money, rules, and mediating organizations on this transformation and examines pitched battles between these champions and their archrivals. The outcomes determined not only the winners but also the future of their sports.
About the Author
Thomas H. Pauly is a recently retired professor of American literature at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women and American Odyssey: Elia Kazan and American Culture.