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 Historical Dictionary of Soccer presents a comprehensive history of the game through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, numerous appendixes that list everything from the FIFA World Player of the Year to FIFA World Cup Winners and Runners-Up to the UEFA Ch...

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.

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.

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.

The only available historical dictionary devoted exclusively to the 1940s, this book offers readers a ready-reference portrait of one of the twentieth century's most tumultuous decades. In nearly 600 concise entries, the volume quickly defines a historical figure, institution, or event, and then points readers to three sources that treat the subject in depth. In selecting topics for inclusion, the editors and authors offer a representative slice of life as contemporaneous Americans saw it - with coverage of people; movements; court cases; and economic, social, cultural, political, military, and technological changes. The book focuses chiefly on the United States, but places American lives and events firmly within a global context.

The Bengali (Bangla) speaking people are located in the northeastern part of South Asia, particularly in Bangladesh and two states of India – West Bengal and Tripura. There are almost 246 million Bengalis at present, which makes them the fifth largest speech community in the world. Despite political and social divisions, they share a common literary and musical culture and several habits of daily existence which impart to them a distinct identity. The Bengalis are known for their political consciousness and cultural accomplishments The Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis provides an overview of the Bengalis across the world from the earliest Chalcolithic cultures to the present. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 750 cross-referenced dictionary entries on politicians, educators and entrepreneurs, leaders of religious and secular institutions, writers, painters, actors and other cultural figures, and more generally, on the economy, education, political parties, religions, women and minorities, literature, art and architecture, music, cinema and other major sectors. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Bengalis.