100 books like City Games

This is one of my favorite books. Gramsci was an Italian philosopher imprisoned by Italian fascists in 1928. Although not physically imposing (he measured only five feet in height and was a hunchback); but Mussolini considered him to be the most dangerous man in Italy due to his intellect.

Gramsci's hegemony theory states that in any society, a dominant group has the power to define and shape society by establishing particular values and practices that become accepted as social norms. All other subordinate groups (of which there may be several) can accept, reject, adopt, or adapt such dictates, which can produce a continual power struggle in the production of popular culture.

I was exposed to this theory in graduate school, and it enabled me to make sense of the world around me for the first time, as I came from a working-class family seemingly mired in poverty in the capitalist… show more.

This book is the classic and foundational book in which the author designates the requisite characteristics of modern sports: secularization, equality, specialization, rationalization, and bureaucracy.

Secularization distanced sport from the association with religious rituals such as the ancient Olympic Games. Distinct rules and regulations relative to participants designated equal opportunities for success. The sport's perceived physical, social, and moral benefits provided a rational reason for their practice. Specialized events required specialized practice, furthering the advent of professionalism.

The greater profusion and practice of sport led to the creation of associations to administer and regulate the activities. Melvin Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-70, later added commercialization and urbanization as a feature of modernity.

This book examines the social control of Jewish immigrant youth in New York City through the use of supervised playgrounds that drew the children from street life to organized games and activities.

Sports taught rules and regulations, a WASP sense of morality and middle class values, and competition, which served as the basis for the capitalist economy. Sport served as an opiate for the masses, altering traditional work and leisure patterns, effecting a new social order, while it desecrated the Jewish Sabbath for some in the process of assimilation.

My next pick is a masterful account of astute analysis written in vibrant prose that recounts the working class version of pugilism during the Antebellum period and the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century. In the frontier communities, males issued public challenges to other individuals or, in general, appealed to any challengers to test one's masculinity.

Lacking rules, such contests allowed for brutal tactics, including eye gouging and even castration, unless or until an opponent admitted defeat. Rather than the middle and upper-class virtues of piety, sobriety, and social mobility, such altercations provided a compensatory value system that rewarded physical prowess.

With the gradual introduction of the Marquis of Queensberry rules after the Civil War, boxing gradually assumed a somewhat more genteel appearance and limited acceptance as a professional sport, producing working-class, racial, and ethnic heroes. By the end of the nineteenth century, it gained the stature of a commercialized… show more.

I always love to read books that do something or cover things that I’ll never be able to do on my own, and Gray crushes that in this book.

Through an awesome set of interviews with players, Gray breaks down how Black users encounter racism in gaming spaces and how they deal with the ongoing structural problems in games. Gray gives voice to perspectives that aren’t heard enough, and I learned a ton from this book.

Kara Vuic gives us the story of young women who went to war—not those in the uniforms of military service, but those who were sent to help boost morale of the men who fought and to remind them of the homes they’d left behind.

She’s keenly aware of the complications and contradictions in the roles the women were expected to fulfill, and of the emotional toll of their work, but she also offers us a sense of their spirit of adventure and a glimpse of the more intimate aspects of 20th century US wars.

If we want a better world, we have to be able to enact change. Play Like a Feminist is about feminism, equality, and games. But it’s also really about how we make change, how we rise up, and how we lift others up. Games can help to reveal not only the problems, but how we can protest those problems and make solutions. It shows us that play itself can be a form of protest.

This book is similar to mine, following a team of high school basketball players through a season, but it’s set in an urban environment: Brooklyn’s Coney Island. The boys it focuses on are African-American, the off-court struggles they and their community face (crime, violence, drug use, the lure of the streets, and the corruption of college basketball recruiters) differ from those that challenge the kids in remote Alaska, but the joy and solace they find in the game itself are the same. The writing is terrific—lucidly and intimately bringing to life the four boys whose lives it focuses on.

Some of the most exciting discoveries in theatre history in recent years have been archaeological, not archival: the excavation of the Curtain theatre’s foundations in Shoreditch, for example, and the revelation that it was rectangular and much larger than previously thought. Davies’ new book capitalises on a series of such findings and complements them with his own rigorous archival work, putting pressure on the very concept of a ‘playhouse’ and what it can be—or rather, what it meant to Shakespeare’s audiences.

I’m a big fan of Simona Ciraolo, and the cover of this book is so perfect! Every spread is filled with brilliant moments of the four seasons. Especially the rainy day spreads are my favorites. It makes you anticipate rainy days even though you’re not a rain person.