Tag: Todd Cleveland
Victories Beyond the Arena: The Untold Story of Africa and the Olympics
In Africa and the Olympics: Winning Away from the Podium (Ohio University Press), Todd Cleveland shows that African countries in spite of modest sporting achievements have achieved nonsporting victories, having used the Olympics to engage in transformative political activity, realize social mobility, and enhance the quality of life for individuals, communities, and entire nations. In his review, Björn Sandahl notes that Cleveland’s well-researched study gives well deserved attention to a part of sport history in great need of new perspectives.
Seminal work on the role and function of sport during the Cold War era
The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War, edited by Robert Edelman & Christopher Young (Stanford University Press), examines Cold War rivalries through the lens of sporting activities and competitions across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. Our reviewer is historian Kristian Gerner, and he finds that the multifaceted analysis in the book reveals how states as well as individual athletes impacted the development of sport and society in the cold war period.
Two books that greatly deepen our knowledge and understanding of football and society in Africa and Europe
In an original piece for idrottsforum.org, Peter Alegi of Michigan State University reviews two books on football, Africa, and Europe, Football and Colonialism: Body and Popular Culture in Urban Mozambique by Nuno Domingos, and Following the Ball: The Migration of African Soccer Players across the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1949–1975 by Todd Cleveland (both titles Ohio University Press).
