Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal

by Daniel A. Nathan

Overview

The story of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and his White Sox teammates purportedly conspiring with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds has lingered in our collective consciousness for a century. Daniel A. Nathan's wide-ranging history looks at how journalists, historians, novelists, filmmakers, and baseball fans have represented and remembered the scandal. Nathan's reflections on what these different cultural narratives reveal about their creators and eras shape a fascinating study of cultural values, memory, and the ways people make meaning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252091988
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	10/01/2010
Series:	Sport and Society
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Daniel A. Nathan is the Douglas Family Chair in American Culture, History, and Literary and Interdisciplinary Studies at Skidmore College. He is the editor of Rooting for the Home Team: Sport, Community, and Identity and coeditor of Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime.

Table of Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. History's First Draft: News, Narrative, and the Black Sox Scandal 2. "Fix These Faces in Your Memory": The Black Sox Scandal and American Collective Memories 3. The Novel as History, a Novel History: Bernard Malamud's The Natural and Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out Illustrations follow page 118 4. Off the Bench: Historians Take a Swing at the Black Sox Scandal 5. Idyll and Iconoclalsm: Retelling the Black Sox Scandal in the Eighties 6. Dreaming and Scheming: The Black Sox Scandal at the End of the Twentieth Century Conclusion Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Book Award, 2003. Winner of the North American Society for Sport History Book Award, 2003. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2006. Named Book of the Year by both the North American Society for Sport History and the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.

"Nathan's writing is completely accessible, his arguments sound, and his conclusions dead-on."—Chicago Tribune

"Saying It's So is ambitious in its reach, well-researched, and clearly written. The range of texts it considers is impressive and important, and its readings of individual texts are invariably engaging."—Michael Oriard, author of Sporting with the Gods: The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Literature

From the Publisher