Overview

The Cold War was fought in every corner of society, including in the sport and entertainment industries. Recognizing the importance of culture in the battle for hearts and minds, the United States, like the Soviet Union, attempted to win the favor of citizens in nonaligned states through the soft power of sport. Athletes became de facto ambassadors of US interests, their wins and losses serving as emblems of broader efforts to shield American culture—both at home and abroad—against communism. In Defending the American Way of Life, leading sport historians present new perspectives on high-profile issues in this era of sport history alongside research drawn from previously untapped archival sources to highlight the ways that sports influenced and were influenced by Cold War politics. Surveying the significance of sports in Cold War America through lenses of race, gender, diplomacy, cultural infiltration, anti-communist hysteria, doping, state intervention, and more, this collection illustrates how this conflict remains relevant to US sporting institutions, organizations, and ideologies today.

Full Product Details

Author:   Toby C. Rider ,  Kevin B. Witherspoon
Publisher:   University of Arkansas Press
Imprint:   University of Arkansas Press
Weight:   0.608kg
ISBN:  

9781682260777

ISBN 10:   1682260771
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   30 November 2018
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
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Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Sport and American Cold War Culture —Toby C. Rider & Kevin Witherspoon The War of Words: Presenting and Contesting America Through Sport 2. Projecting America: Sport and Early U.S. Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960 —Toby C. Rider 3. Millard Lampell: From Football to the Blacklist —Dennis Gildea Winning the “Right” Way: High Performance, Amateurism, and the American Moral Compass 4. The “Big Arms” Race: Doping and the Cold War Defense of American Exceptionalism —John T. Gleaves & Matthew P. Llewellyn 5. Preserving ‘the American way’: Gerald R. Ford, the President’s Commission on Olympic Sports, and the Fight Against State-Funded Sport in America —Nevada Cooke & Robert K. Barney Making Men and Defining Women: Femininity, Masculinity, and the Politics of Gender 6. “Wolves in Skirts?”: Sex Testing in Cold War Women’s Sport —Lindsay Parks Pieper 7. America’s Team: The U.S. Women’s National Basketball Team Confronts the Soviets, 1958-1969 —Kevin B. Witherspoon 8. To Win One for the Gipper: Football and the Fashioning of a Cold Warrior —Katelyn Aguilar Addressing the “Achilles Heel”: Race and the Cold War at the Periphery 9.“An Outstanding Representative of America”: Mal Whitfield and America’s Black Sports Ambassadors in Africa —Kevin B. Witherspoon 10. “One of the greatest ambassadors that the United States has ever sent abroad”: Wilma Rudolph, American Athletic Icon for the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement —Cat Ariail 11. Defying the Cultural Boycott: Arthur Ashe, the Anti-apartheid Activist —Damion L. Thomas Manipulating the Five Rings: Public Diplomacy, Statecraft, and the Olympic Games 12. Sport is Not so Separate from Politics: Diplomatic Manipulation of Germany’s Postwar Return to the Olympic Movement —Heather L. Dichter 13. Sport and American Foreign Policy During the 1960s —Thomas M. Hunt 14. In Defense of a Neoliberal America: Ronald Reagan, Domestic Policy, and the Soviet Boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games —Bradley J. Congelio Conclusion: A Post- Cold War Perspective 15. Olympic Spectacles in the Next “American Century”: Sport and Nationalism in a Post-Cold War World —Mark Dyreson

Reviews

Toby Rider, Kevin Witherspoon, and their collaborators have crafted a focused, thoughtful, and illuminating set of essays that dissect sport's Cold War arena. They reveal just how intensely the US and the USSR waged the Cold War in a fifth dimension-not via military alliances, economic pacts, political doctrines, or global bodies like the IMF-but via sport. It's history at its best-explaining sport's past while showing how that past continues to affect sport today. - Rob Ruck, author of Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL

"Toby Rider, Kevin Witherspoon, and their collaborators have crafted a focused, thoughtful, and illuminating set of essays that dissect sport's Cold War arena. They reveal just how intensely the US and the USSR waged the Cold War in a fifth dimension—not via military alliances, economic pacts, political doctrines, or global bodies like the IMF—but via sport. It's history at its best—explaining sport's past while showing how that past continues to affect sport today."""" - Rob Ruck, author of Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL"

Toby Rider, Kevin Witherspoon, and their collaborators have crafted a focused, thoughtful, and illuminating set of essays that dissect sport's Cold War arena. They reveal just how intensely the US and the USSR waged the Cold War in a fifth dimension--not via military alliances, economic pacts, political doctrines, or global bodies like the IMF--but via sport. It's history at its best--explaining sport's past while showing how that past continues to affect sport today. --Rob Ruck, author of Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL

Author Information

Toby C. Rider is assistant professor of kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton and the author of Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy. Kevin B. Witherspoon chairs the Department of History at Lander University. He is the author of Before the Eyes of the Word: Mexico and the 1968 Olympic Games.

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