A welter of searchable online databases can help scholars find their way through the increasing store of published sports history research. Still, a need exists for comprehensive, edited anthologies to assist researchers by pointing to influential works in the field. Eminent sports historians Mark Dyreson and Wray Vamplew provide such a guide in their four-volume collection of readings, "Sports History: Issues, Debates and Challenges". By assembling these key articles, however, the editors have done more than that – they have also curated a collection that charts and reflects the major developments in sports history, reflecting the myriad approaches, questions, perspectives, debates and ‘turns’ in the sub-discipline. Keep this one handy.

• VOLUME ONE: AN UNFINISHED JOURNEYIntroduction - Wray Vamplew and Mark DyresonPart One: PioneersThe Technological Revolution and the Rise of Sport, 1850–1900 - John Rickards BettsSporting Days in Eighteenth Century England - Dennis BrailsfordCricket and Australian Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century - W.F. MandlePart Two: Inside and Outside the ArchivesSites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive - Douglas BoothSport Talk: Oral History and Its Uses, Problems, and Possibilities for Sport History - Susan K. CahnSport History as Modes of Expression: Material Culture and Cultural Spaces in Sport and History - Linda Borish and Murray PhillipsPart Three: Using TheoryThe Consecration of Sport: Idealism in Social Science Theory - Douglas BoothConcepts of Capital: An Approach Shot to the History of the British Sports Club before 1914 - Wray VamplewThe Nature of Sport under Capitalism and Its Relationship to the Capitalist Labour Process - Bob StewartAssessing Sport History and the Cultural and Linguistic Turn - Colin HowellPart Four: Contextual ApproachesHow to Read Historical ContextMass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914 - Eric HobsbawmHow to Avoid Misreading Historical Context“The Only Woman in All Greece”: Kyniska, Agesilaus, Alcibiades and Olympia - Donald KylePart Five: Innovatory ApproachesHow to Read the MediaReading, Watching, and Listening to Football - Michael OriardHow to Swim against the Currents of ContextA History of Synchronized Swimming - Synthia SydnorPart Six: Areas of Challenge: Emotion, Children and EroticismEmotionSenses and Emotions in the History of Sport - Barbara KeysChildrenChild Work or Child Labour? The Caddie Question in Edwardian Golf - Wray VamplewA Blinkered Approach? Attitudes towards Children and Young People in British Horseracing and Equestrian Sport - Joyce KayEroticismSpartan Girls, French Postcards, and the Male Gaze: Another Go at Eros and Sports - Allen GuttmannVOLUME TWO: MORE THAN A GAMEPart One: Gender“Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch”: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry - Elliott GornFrom Amazons to Glamazons: The Rise and Fall of North Carolina Women’s Basketball, 1920–1960 - Pamela GrundyCaster Semenya and the “Question of Too”: Sex Testing in Elite Women′s Sport and the Issue of Advantage - Jaime SchultzPart Two: Race and EthnicityBasketball and the Culture-Change Process: The Rimrock Navajo Case - Kendall BlanchardThe Quest for Subcommunities and the Rise of American Sport - Benjamin RaderBasketball and Magic in ‘Middletown’: Locating Sport and Culture in American Social Science - Mark DyresonPart Three: AssociativityA Theory of the Evolution of Modern Sport - Stefan SzymanskiThe Role of Associativity in the Evolution of Modern Sport: A Comment on Stefan Szymanski’s Theory - Klaus NathausPart Four: Sport as Consumer CultureWhere Did You Go, Jackie Robinson? Or, the End of History and the Age of Sport Infrastructure - Stephen HardyThe Rise of “The World’s Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitters”: A Study of Gamage’s of Holborn, 1878–1913 - Geraldine Biddle-PerryPart Five: Sport and Nation`Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s - Barbara Keys“I Can Compete!” China in the Olympic Games, 1932 and 1936 - Andrew MorrisThe Republic of Consumption at the Olympic Games: Globalization, Americanization, and Californization - Mark DyresonPart Six: Sport and International RelationsThe Relevance of the “Irrelevant”: Football as a Missing Dimension in the Study of British Relations with Germany - Peter BeckJapan′s Sports Diplomacy in the Early Post-Second World War Years - Sayuri Guthrie-ShimizuGlobal Players? Football, Migration and Globalization - Matthew TaylorPart Seven: Sport and the First World War‘Leather’ and the Fighting Spirit: Sport in the British Army in World War I - Eliza Riedi and Tony MasonExploding the Myths of Sport and the First World War: A First Salvo - Wray Vamplew“The First Ever Anti-Football Painting”? - Iain Adams and John HughsonVOLUME THREE: A FORCE FOR GOOD?Part One: The Civilizing Process: The British DebateHistory, Theory and the “Civilizing Process” - Tony CollinsSociological versus Empiricist History: Some Comments on Tony Collins’s ‘History, Theory and the “Civilizing Process”’ - Graham Curry, Eric Dunning and Kenneth SheardPart Two: Football HooliganismFootball Hooliganism in Britain before the First World War - Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy, John Williams and Joseph MaguireFootball Hooliganism Revisited: A Belated Reply to Patrick Murphy, Eric Dunning and Joseph Maguire - Robert LewisPart Three: The Civilizing Process: AmericaSports Spectators from Antiquity to the Renaissance - Allen GuttmannSpectators and Crowds in Sport History: A Critical Analysis of Allen Guttmann’s Sports Spectators - Donald KyleA Modernist’s View - Melvin AdelmanPart Four: Opposition to SportCriticisms against the Value-Claim for Sport and the Physical Ideal in Late Nineteenth Century Australia - David W. BrownAnti-Sport: Victorian Examples from Oxbridge - John BaleRethinking the History of Criticism of Organised Sport - G.K. PeatlingPart Five: The Dark SideDiscourses of Deception: Cheating in Professional Running - Peter MewettOnly the Ring Was Square: Frankie Carbo and the Underworld Control of American Boxing - Steven A. RiessLord Bentinck, the Jockey Club and Racing Morality in Mid-Nineteenth Century England: The “Running Rein” Derby Revisited - Mike HugginsVOLUME FOUR: FLEXIBLE BOUNDARIESPart One: As Others See UsCracks in the (Self-Constructed?) Ghetto Walls? Comments on Paul Ward’s ‘Last Man Picked’ - Malcolm MacLeanSport in Modern European History: Trajectories, Constellations, Conjunctures - Alan Tomlinson and Christopher YoungCommon Ground? Links between Sports History, Sports Geography and the Sociology of Sport - Joe MaguireEconomists and Sports History - Stefan SzymanskiDancing on the Edge of Disciplines: Law and the Interdisciplinary Turn - Ken Foster and Guy OsbornPart Two: Time and SpaceSport, Society and Space: The Changing Geography of County Cricket in South Australia 1836-1914 - Clive ForsterVillage Greens, Commons Land and the Emergence of Sports Law in the UK - Jack AndersonPart Three: ModernisationFrom Ritual to Record - Allen GuttmannOf Remembering and Forgetting: From Ritual to Record and Beyond - Colin HowellThe Problems with Ritual and Modernization Theory, and Why We Need Marx: A Commentary on From Ritual to Record - Susan BrownellPart Four: BorderlandsBorderlands, Baselines and Bearhunters - Colin HowellThe Foot Runners Conquer Mexico and Texas: Endurance Racing, Indigenismo, and Nationalism’ - Mark DyresonPart Five: Sport as a Culture-Making ToolDeep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight - Clifford GeertzWhat Is Art? - C.L.R. JamesPart Six: Sports History for Public ConsumptionA Historian in the Museum: Story Spaces and Australia’s Sporting Past - Murray PhillipsSport History, Public History, and Popular Culture: A Growing Engagement - Kevin MooreWriting Sports History for “Non-Specialists”: A Reply to the Review Symposium on Adair and Vamplew′s Sport in Australian History, and the State of Australian Sports History - Daryl Adair

A welter of searchable online databases can help scholars find their way through the increasing store of published sports history research. Still, a need exists for comprehensive, edited anthologies to assist researchers by pointing to influential works in the field. Eminent sports historians Mark Dyreson and Wray Vamplew provide such a guide in their four-volume collection of readings, "Sports History: Issues, Debates and Challenges". By assembling these key articles, however, the editors have done more than that – they have also curated a collection that charts and reflects the major developments in sports history, reflecting the myriad approaches, questions, perspectives, debates and ‘turns’ in the sub-discipline. Keep this one handy.

• VOLUME ONE: AN UNFINISHED JOURNEYIntroduction - Wray Vamplew and Mark DyresonPart One: PioneersThe Technological Revolution and the Rise of Sport, 1850–1900 - John Rickards BettsSporting Days in Eighteenth Century England - Dennis BrailsfordCricket and Australian Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century - W.F. MandlePart Two: Inside and Outside the ArchivesSites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive - Douglas BoothSport Talk: Oral History and Its Uses, Problems, and Possibilities for Sport History - Susan K. CahnSport History as Modes of Expression: Material Culture and Cultural Spaces in Sport and History - Linda Borish and Murray PhillipsPart Three: Using TheoryThe Consecration of Sport: Idealism in Social Science Theory - Douglas BoothConcepts of Capital: An Approach Shot to the History of the British Sports Club before 1914 - Wray VamplewThe Nature of Sport under Capitalism and Its Relationship to the Capitalist Labour Process - Bob StewartAssessing Sport History and the Cultural and Linguistic Turn - Colin HowellPart Four: Contextual ApproachesHow to Read Historical ContextMass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914 - Eric HobsbawmHow to Avoid Misreading Historical Context“The Only Woman in All Greece”: Kyniska, Agesilaus, Alcibiades and Olympia - Donald KylePart Five: Innovatory ApproachesHow to Read the MediaReading, Watching, and Listening to Football - Michael OriardHow to Swim against the Currents of ContextA History of Synchronized Swimming - Synthia SydnorPart Six: Areas of Challenge: Emotion, Children and EroticismEmotionSenses and Emotions in the History of Sport - Barbara KeysChildrenChild Work or Child Labour? The Caddie Question in Edwardian Golf - Wray VamplewA Blinkered Approach? Attitudes towards Children and Young People in British Horseracing and Equestrian Sport - Joyce KayEroticismSpartan Girls, French Postcards, and the Male Gaze: Another Go at Eros and Sports - Allen GuttmannVOLUME TWO: MORE THAN A GAMEPart One: Gender“Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch”: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry - Elliott GornFrom Amazons to Glamazons: The Rise and Fall of North Carolina Women’s Basketball, 1920–1960 - Pamela GrundyCaster Semenya and the “Question of Too”: Sex Testing in Elite Women′s Sport and the Issue of Advantage - Jaime SchultzPart Two: Race and EthnicityBasketball and the Culture-Change Process: The Rimrock Navajo Case - Kendall BlanchardThe Quest for Subcommunities and the Rise of American Sport - Benjamin RaderBasketball and Magic in ‘Middletown’: Locating Sport and Culture in American Social Science - Mark DyresonPart Three: AssociativityA Theory of the Evolution of Modern Sport - Stefan SzymanskiThe Role of Associativity in the Evolution of Modern Sport: A Comment on Stefan Szymanski’s Theory - Klaus NathausPart Four: Sport as Consumer CultureWhere Did You Go, Jackie Robinson? Or, the End of History and the Age of Sport Infrastructure - Stephen HardyThe Rise of “The World’s Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitters”: A Study of Gamage’s of Holborn, 1878–1913 - Geraldine Biddle-PerryPart Five: Sport and Nation`Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s - Barbara Keys“I Can Compete!” China in the Olympic Games, 1932 and 1936 - Andrew MorrisThe Republic of Consumption at the Olympic Games: Globalization, Americanization, and Californization - Mark DyresonPart Six: Sport and International RelationsThe Relevance of the “Irrelevant”: Football as a Missing Dimension in the Study of British Relations with Germany - Peter BeckJapan′s Sports Diplomacy in the Early Post-Second World War Years - Sayuri Guthrie-ShimizuGlobal Players? Football, Migration and Globalization - Matthew TaylorPart Seven: Sport and the First World War‘Leather’ and the Fighting Spirit: Sport in the British Army in World War I - Eliza Riedi and Tony MasonExploding the Myths of Sport and the First World War: A First Salvo - Wray Vamplew“The First Ever Anti-Football Painting”? - Iain Adams and John HughsonVOLUME THREE: A FORCE FOR GOOD?Part One: The Civilizing Process: The British DebateHistory, Theory and the “Civilizing Process” - Tony CollinsSociological versus Empiricist History: Some Comments on Tony Collins’s ‘History, Theory and the “Civilizing Process”’ - Graham Curry, Eric Dunning and Kenneth SheardPart Two: Football HooliganismFootball Hooliganism in Britain before the First World War - Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy, John Williams and Joseph MaguireFootball Hooliganism Revisited: A Belated Reply to Patrick Murphy, Eric Dunning and Joseph Maguire - Robert LewisPart Three: The Civilizing Process: AmericaSports Spectators from Antiquity to the Renaissance - Allen GuttmannSpectators and Crowds in Sport History: A Critical Analysis of Allen Guttmann’s Sports Spectators - Donald KyleA Modernist’s View - Melvin AdelmanPart Four: Opposition to SportCriticisms against the Value-Claim for Sport and the Physical Ideal in Late Nineteenth Century Australia - David W. BrownAnti-Sport: Victorian Examples from Oxbridge - John BaleRethinking the History of Criticism of Organised Sport - G.K. PeatlingPart Five: The Dark SideDiscourses of Deception: Cheating in Professional Running - Peter MewettOnly the Ring Was Square: Frankie Carbo and the Underworld Control of American Boxing - Steven A. RiessLord Bentinck, the Jockey Club and Racing Morality in Mid-Nineteenth Century England: The “Running Rein” Derby Revisited - Mike HugginsVOLUME FOUR: FLEXIBLE BOUNDARIESPart One: As Others See UsCracks in the (Self-Constructed?) Ghetto Walls? Comments on Paul Ward’s ‘Last Man Picked’ - Malcolm MacLeanSport in Modern European History: Trajectories, Constellations, Conjunctures - Alan Tomlinson and Christopher YoungCommon Ground? Links between Sports History, Sports Geography and the Sociology of Sport - Joe MaguireEconomists and Sports History - Stefan SzymanskiDancing on the Edge of Disciplines: Law and the Interdisciplinary Turn - Ken Foster and Guy OsbornPart Two: Time and SpaceSport, Society and Space: The Changing Geography of County Cricket in South Australia 1836-1914 - Clive ForsterVillage Greens, Commons Land and the Emergence of Sports Law in the UK - Jack AndersonPart Three: ModernisationFrom Ritual to Record - Allen GuttmannOf Remembering and Forgetting: From Ritual to Record and Beyond - Colin HowellThe Problems with Ritual and Modernization Theory, and Why We Need Marx: A Commentary on From Ritual to Record - Susan BrownellPart Four: BorderlandsBorderlands, Baselines and Bearhunters - Colin HowellThe Foot Runners Conquer Mexico and Texas: Endurance Racing, Indigenismo, and Nationalism’ - Mark DyresonPart Five: Sport as a Culture-Making ToolDeep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight - Clifford GeertzWhat Is Art? - C.L.R. JamesPart Six: Sports History for Public ConsumptionA Historian in the Museum: Story Spaces and Australia’s Sporting Past - Murray PhillipsSport History, Public History, and Popular Culture: A Growing Engagement - Kevin MooreWriting Sports History for “Non-Specialists”: A Reply to the Review Symposium on Adair and Vamplew′s Sport in Australian History, and the State of Australian Sports History - Daryl Adair