An introduction to the Bible's teaching on sport and a compendium of practical advice for maximising the blessings of sport while avoiding its potential dangers.

This Sporting Life offers an important view of England's cultural history through its sporting pursuits, carrying the reader to a match or a hunt or a fight, viscerally drawing a portrait of the sounds and smells, and showing that sport has been as important in defining British culture as gender, politics, education, class, and religion.

Enter into the sporting life, the world of prostitutes, pimps, madams, gamblers, bootleggers, and drag queens. From the ritzy clubs, hidden speakeasies, luxurious brothels, and down-on-their-luck dives of old to the seedy massage parlours and back alleys of today, the sporting life has always intersected with the culture of African-American hoodoo, conjure, and rootwork. Now Professor Porterfield takes you into the clandestine milieu of underworld beliefs and secret practices, and shows the impact that the sporting life has on the world of magic and spirituality. With more than 150 practical spells, charms, recipes, and authentic old-style tricks, The Sporting Life pulls back the velvet curtain that has for too long concealed the life, times, and history of the demimonde. Presenting the magic of the prostitutes of the Bible, the working girls of Storyville and Memphis, the high-stakes bettors, the magnetic madams, the persuasive pimps, the cagey corner dope dealers, and members of oppressed lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender communities of colour ? The Sporting Life is sure to startle your senses and thrill your heart. This exhaustively researched book blows open the hidden world of love, lust, vice, and danger that is the sporting life.

This lively and intriguing study looks at the way sports both reflected and shaped Victorian society. Just as our own games have a lot to say about modern American culture, so sports are a prism through which we can gain valuable insights into Victorian society. The Sporting Life: Victorian Sports and Games is an engaging and perceptive account of how sport developed during Britain's heyday, who played (and who wasn't allowed to play), and what it all conveys about gender, race, imperialism, and national pride. Drawing extensively on 19th-century writings, The Sporting Life begins with a survey of sports in pre-Victorian England and the impact of industrialism in the early 19th century. We read of the effects of evangelicalism and utilitarianism, both of which first opposed sport, then used it for their own purposes. We learn of the association of sports with masculinity, an identification women challenged late in the century. Finally we learn how English sports became part of the imperial game, used to promote—and resist—the spread of Victoria's vast empire.

"Examines autobiographies by athletes such as Wilt Chamberlain, Babe Ruth, Martina Navratilova, and Dennis Rodman, and analyzes common themes and recurring patterns in the accounts of their lives and sporting experiences"--Provided by publisher.

A rugby player finds fame and fortune in a bleak mining town, but he cannot outrun the emptiness he feels inside in Man Booker Prize–winning author David Storey’s seminal first novel On Christmas Eve, Arthur breaks his two front teeth. A teammate on the rugby pitch is too slow with a handoff, and instead of catching the ball, Art catches an opponent’s foot right in the mouth. When he regains consciousness, the match is almost over, but he keeps playing regardless. Where else would he go? His entire life, Art has only cared about sports and nothing grabs his attention quite like the lightning-fast violence of Rugby League. He knows it could kill him, but it also makes him feel alive. In this hard-bitten Yorkshire mining town, the warriors of the rugby pitch are treated like gods. Through the aggressive sport, Art finds money, friends, and countless women. But when his lust for violence begins to fade, will he have the courage to leave the game behind?