Tag: Łukasz Muniowski

Mike Mentzer was a strikingly handsome man with a brilliant mind and a “perfect” physique — the first bodybuilder to receive a perfect score in both amateur and professional competitions. But he was also a man who wrestled with mental illness his entire life and ended up living on the streets and being sent to prison, but eventually finding it within himself to reboot his intellect and revolutionize bodybuilding training. Łukasz Muniowski has read John Little’s biography, which, he concludes, is not a simple hagiography or a thing for bodybuilding fans, but a story about an actual person, who lived, sweated and suffered while trying to achieve perfection in his craft.

Since 1930, the World Cup has become a truly global obsession, but it has also been a vehicle for far more than football. Yet there has been no comprehensive history of the tournament. Based on fresh interviews and meticulously researched, Jonathan Wilson’s The Power and the Glory: The History of the World Cup (Bold Types Books) will change that. Our reviewer Łukasz Muniowski is overwhelmed by Wilson’s effort – a brilliant book by a brilliant sports journalist that should impress even the most knowledgeable football fanatics.

In The Golden Generation: How Canada Became a Basketball Powerhouse (ECW), basketball journalist Oren Weisfeld uncovers the growth of Canadian basketball through the lens of Team Canada and its most influential figures, alternating between key moments in the rise of the Canadian men’s national team, innovations in the grassroots community, and profiles of Canada’s top players. Łukasz Muniowski’s knowledgeable review reveals the strong as well as the weak sides of this non-academic book, and the bottom line is that it's a vital contribution to the deeper understanding of the shift in world basketball.

In More Than an Athlete: Jim Brown, Black Capitalism, and the Black Economic Union (University Press of Kentucky), author Robert A. Bennett III explores the BEU as part of Brown’s legacy to answer larger questions about the role of Black athletes as activists, and how their activism impacted their careers and the movements they supported. Bennett’s book is reviewed by sport historian and NFL specialist Łukasz Muniowski. His presentation of Bennett’s book works well as an introduction to the history of athlete activism, of which Jim Brown was an early example, and an inspiration for contemporary civil rights activists like Colin Kaepernick.

Łukasz Muniowski’s new book Sport and Video Games (Routledge) explores the complex relationships between sport and video games, two of the largest entertainment sectors globally, and examines how sport has influenced gaming, and vice versa, and how this relationship is likely to develop in the future. While being positive to Muniowski’s clear and engaging writing and his thematic structure of the book, our reviewer Egil Trasti Rogland also points to some unfortunate choices, such as omitting online gaming, racing games and exergames from the book.

Brittany Reid’s and Taylor McKee’s collected volume Duelism: Confronting Sport Through Its Doubles (Common Ground) curates critical readings from sport scholars across many fields that acknowledge and interrogate the concept of sport by exploring it in connection with its significant doubles, an approach termed “duelism.” Steph Doehler’s reading of the anthology evokes mainly positive reactions, while also indicating that critical comments are called for.

Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research is an open access journal with a wide scope encompassing sociology, history, philosophy and other disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. It’s the journal of Josef Pilsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw and International Society for the Social Sciences of Sport.

Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research is an open access journal with a wide scope encompassing sociology, history, philosophy and other disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. It’s the journal of Josef Pilsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw and International Society for the Social Sciences of Sport.