Tag: Hans Bolling

In Crossing the line? The Press and Anglo-German Football Rivalry (Peter Lang Publishers), Christoph Wagner writes about England’s rivalry with West Germany/Germany played out on the football pitch in the second half of the twentieth century. The central sources for his study are newspapers from England and West Germany. Hans Bolling seems to have enjoyed the book (although he would have preferred to read it in German); it is well researched and instructive. And it mentions Kurt Hamrin.

I Leif Yttergrens och Hans Bollings Kroppens apostlar. Kvinnliga gymnastikdirektörer 1864–2020 (Stockholmia Förlag) berättas historien om det år 1813 inrättade Gymnastiska centralinstitutet (GCI) i Stockholm där både män och kvinnor utbildades till gymnastikdirektörer, i en tid då kvinnor ännu var omyndiga. Jørn Hansen har tagit del av de bägge historikernas fascinerande berättelse och rekommenderar boken varmt till intresserade i såväl historia och idrottshistoria som kvinnostudier.

In The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event (Rowman & Littlefield), veteran soccer reporter Clemente A. Lisi chronicles the tournament from 1930 to today, including a preview of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Lisi’s effort is reviewed here by historian Hans Bolling, who finds both the classic fallacies of non-historians writing history and a few embarrassing editorial mistakes. Still, he enjoyed reading it and recommends it for people with a general interest in football to read before future World Cup tournaments.

Conor Curran’s Soccer and Society in Dublin: A History of Association Football in Ireland’s Capital (Four Courts Press) is the first full-length assessment of the history of soccer in Dublin and the game’s role within society in the city. Sports (and not least football) historian Hans Bolling read the book at our behest, and he found too much empirical detail about soccer at the expense of society, while also recognizing the value of the empirical material in the book for future studies of Irish football and of the development of football in other European capitals.

How did the world’s most popular sport begin? How was the ancient family of pastimes called «folk football» transformed into a new codified game – «association football»? Gavin Kitching tackles the question in A Fateful Love: Essays on Football in the North-East of England 1880–1930 (Peter Lang Publishing). Hans Bolling, experienced football historian, finds the book interesting but points out some historiographic problems therein, deriving from the fact that the author is not a trained historian.

Aarhus Universitetsforlag fick en idé: 100 böcker av 100 forskare på 100 sidor under 100 månader som var och en beskriver ett år i Danmarks historia. 1983 var året när Danmarks fotbollsherrar besegrade England på Wembley med 1–0. Christian Tolstrup Jensen berättar om detta i Sejren på Wembley, som vi bad Hans Bolling läsa och recensera. Han kan konstatera att Jensen lyckats väl med uppdraget, och man kan inte längre använda tidsbrist som bortförklaring för att inte läsa in sig på dansk fotbollshistoria.

Kvinnor och män i Lönsboda Pistolskytteklubb 1963–2020: Ett lokalt perspektiv på skytterörelsen i Sverige av Mats Greiff och Anders Lindh (Arx Förlag) belyser det vardagliga idrottslivet i byn Lönsboda i nordöstra Skåne under en period på närmare 60 år, utifrån bland annat genus- och generationsaspekter. Vi bad historikern Hans Bolling om en recension, och fick med den också lite historisk bakgrund om skyttesportens ställning i Sverige.

SSSF, a multidisciplinary social sciences sport studies journal, welcomes articles that deal with sport and social change and social stability in a wide sense, articles about the profound and comprehensive processes affecting sport. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: “I bow down in awe of them…”: Sports awards for Paralympic athletes and Olympic athletes by Marte Bentzen & Kristin Vindhol Evensen.

The History of Physical Culture in Ireland, Conor Heffernan’s Ph.D. thesis published by Palgrave Macmillan, is the first study to deal with physical culture in an Irish context, covering educational, martial and recreational histories. We asked historian Hans Bolling for a review, and he is highly appreciative of Heffernan’s efforts – “a book well worth spending time with”. In his review, Bolling creates added value by including information about the Swedish contribution to physical culture in Ireland.

“Manchester United” yields 352 hits under the category “biographies & memoirs” on Amazon, and Brendon McGuire’s Growing Up With the Trinity: An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman Walked Onto a Football Pitch… (Pitch Publishing) is one of them. A pity, according to out reviewer Hans Bolling, who senses that there is an interesting narrative untold, about the experiences and memories of a young Mancunian growing up in the 1960s.