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In Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs, Tom Benjey expanded the scope of his previous work, Keep A-Goin': The Life of Lone Star Dietz, to explore the lives of not just one of the Carlisle Indian School football immortals but the core group of men -- more than 50 all told -- who helped create the sport, both amateur and professional, we enjoy today. The issue for the Carlisle students of the competing visions of mainstreaming versus cultural retention for Native Americans in this country is one that Dr. Benjey explores in detail, the validities of which are still debated a century later. During the past three decades, a plethora of books have been written about the Carlisle team. In my opinion, none of them can match the exhaustive research, attention to detail and, most importantly, the accuracy of Dr. Benjey's book. The most sophisticated and learned historians, sociologists and anthropologists, rabid sports fans or casual readers will be enthralled by his compelling style and thrilled by the many factual treasures he has uncovered. Robert W. Wheeler, author of Jim Thorpe: World's Greatest Athlete
Until age 15, Billy Dietz thought he was the natural son of a prominent white couple in Rice
Set in the context of the evolving game of football and America's mobilization for WWI, Fields of Friendly Strifetells the story of the players and teams from the military training camps of WWI that played in the 1918 and 1919 Rose Bowls. We follow the Camp Lewis and Mare Island teams through the 1917 season, culminating in the 1918 Rose Bowl, before the players complete their training and ship to Europe, seeing action at Belleau Wood, the Meuse-Argonne, and in Flanders. Back home, a new set of servicemen train for war while playing in the 1918 season, which is upended by the federalization of America's colleges and the Spanish Flu. By season's end, teams from the Great Lakes and Mare Island training camps battle in the 1919 Rose Bowl, completing one of the most remarkable periods in the history of American football. Fields of Friendly Strifefollows these men after the war, tracing their impact on the game of football-including the development of the NFL-as well as America's military.
Until age 15, Billy Dietz thought he was the natural son of a prominent white couple in Rice
A classic NFL/civil rights story—the showdown between the Washington Redskins and the Kennedy White House In Showdown, sports historian Thomas G. Smith captures a striking moment, one that held sweeping implications not only for one team’s racist policy but also for a sharply segregated city and for the nation as a whole. Part sports history, part civil rights story, this compelling and untold narrative serves as a powerful lens onto racism in sport, illustrating how, in microcosm, the fight to desegregate the Redskins was part of a wider struggle against racial injustice in America.
Tom Benjey's Glorious Times tells the fascinating and important story of an American clan of Scots-Irish that settled in the early 1700s in Pennsylvania. From this clan came an astonishing number exceptional people, many of whom dedicated their lives to nature. This book even poses the question as to whether this family had a special "Naturalist DNA". It covers many generations, but appropriately focuses most attention on the famous siblings Frank Jr., John, and Jean (Craighead George).
Born in 1888 in Oklahoma Territory, Jim Thorpe was a Sac and Fox Indian. After attending the Sac and Fox agency school and Haskell Indian Junior College in Lawrence, Kansas, he transferred to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. At Carlisle he led the football team to victories over some of the nation’s best college teams-Army, Navy, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska. In 1912 he participated in the Olympic Games in Stockholm, winning both the decathlon and pentathlon. It was then that King Gustav V of Sweden dubbed him "the world’s greatest athlete." Between 1913 and 1919, Thorpe played professional baseball for the New York Giants, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Boston Braves. In 1915 he began playing professional football with the Canton (Ohio) Bulldogs. When the top teams were organized into the American Professional Football Association in 1920, Thorpe was named the first president of the league, which was renamed the National Football League in 1922. Throughout his career he excelled in every sport he played, earning King Gustav’s accolade many times over.
"All American is riveting and grand-that rare pairing of exquisite writing and unassailable research. Crawford delivers you to an age when iconic titans like Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner marched across the planet, and he is the perfect guide to their enormous triumphs and tragedies. This is epic American history at its page-turning finest." -Bill Minutaglio, author of City on Fire and First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty He was the greatest football running back of his era, leading his Carlisle Indian Industrial School team to victory over all the great college powerhouses. King Gustav of Sweden called him "the greatest athlete in the world" after he won gold medals for the dec...
The Imperial Gridiron examines the competing versions of manhood at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School between 1879 and 1918. Students often arrived at Carlisle already engrained with Indigenous ideals of masculinity. On many occasions these ideals would come into conflict with the models of manhood created by the school’s original superintendent, Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt believed that Native Americans required the “embrace of civilization,” and he emphasized the qualities of self-control, Christian ethics, and retaliatory masculinity. He encouraged sportsmanship and fair play over victory. Pratt’s successors, however, adopted a different approach, and victory was enshrined as t...