Six Favorite Sports Books in 2023
Running, fitness, basketball, and the decade that made sports boom
The end of December means that it’s time to reflect on new books I’ve read over the past twelve months. I tend to read in three areas: American sports history/culture; American religious history; and Christian theology/formation.
The list below is focused on the sports side of things, listed in reverse order.
But first, a quick shoutout: Last week I was a guest on the Sports Spectrum podcast with Jason Romano. We talked about the history of sports and Christianity in America and some of the challenges Christian athletes and coaches face as they try to live out their faith in the public eye. If you’re the sort of person who reads or subscribes to this newsletter (and apparently you are), I think it will be worth your while.
Ok, on to the book list!
6. Lauren Fleshman, Good For A Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World
A poignant and eye-opening book from an elite runner that combines the personal intimacy of a memoir with the teaching skill of a professor. You learn about Fleshman’s struggles and triumphs, yes, but also about the intricacies of elite running culture and the challenges women face in a sports system that does not often take the realities of their bodies into account.
The book succeeds on its own as a fascinating and compelling story. But it also has practical value: It’s the type of book that anyone involved with women’s sports should probably read.
5. Michael MacCambridge, The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America
Sports history journalism at its finest. MacCambridge—who has also written excellent books on the history of the NFL and Sports Illustrated—takes readers back to the key figures, events, and transformations of the sports world in the 1970s. It is not easy to maintain a consistent through line when dealing with so much material, but MacCambridge pays special attention to the rise of women’s sports and the ways media shapes how Americans experience sports. He also has a brief section on the growth of the “born-again” athlete subculture, which I loved to see.
Although I was born in 1985, I felt a heavy dose of nostalgia while reading this book. I think it’s because MacCambridge explores the origins of features I simply took for granted as a “normal” part of the everyday sports experience in America.
4. Sally Jenkins, The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life
Sally Jenkins is a superb sportswriter, one of the best in the business. Which is a good thing for me, because I otherwise might have avoided this book.
There have been hundreds of authors over the last century who aim to do what Jenkins does here: tell us what sports can teach us about life beyond sports. Yet somehow Jenkins manages to offer interesting angles and aha moments, packaged in compelling prose. Full of insights drawn from interviews over the years with men and women who have excelled at the highest levels of athletic competition, in many ways this book is the culmination of Jenkins’ life in sports.
I found myself inspired and challenged throughout, jotting down notes and ideas to use in my own work. This is the rare book that has practical insights that can be appreciated by athletes and coaches as well as sports scholars and journalists.
3. Theresa Runstedtler, Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA
I’ll admit it: I have a bias for books authored by trained sports historians who know how to write.
While the first three books on my list were excellent—and all three offered insights from sports history to varying degrees—I simply can’t kick the comfort and familiarity of my own training. I love a book that takes a sports subject, contextualizes it within its time and place, explains its deeper cultural meaning and significance, charts its changes and transformations over time, and ultimately helps us better understand how and why sports matter in ways that transcend the field of play.
That’s why my three favorite sports books this year came from academic historians.
This one, from Theresa Runstedtler, reframes a common narrative about the NBA of the 1970s. The decade has often been cast as a time of decline, with white fans losing interest while drug use and violence were supposedly running rampant in the majority Black league. Runstedtler challenges those racialized interpretations, presenting instead a story of gifted Black men bringing creativity and innovation to professional basketball while also fighting to control their bodies and their labor.
In my read, the strength of this book is Runstedtler’s combination of cultural analysis with her expertise in labor history. By placing the NBA in conversation with broader developments related to race, economics, and worker’s rights, she helps us see basketball history in a new light.
If you’re intrigued and want to know more about the book, check out her appearance on my friend John Fea’s podcast:
2. Johnny Smith, Jumpman: The Making and Meaning of Michael Jordan
When I first began to do sports history as a grad student, trying to find my own voice and approach, I gravitated towards Johnny Smith’s style. His books on John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty and Muhammad Ali / Malcolm X gave me a model to follow: a narrative approach, grounded in deep research, that welcomed nuance and complexity while seeking to contextualize and analyze sports as part of a broader social and cultural world.
Not one to shy away from big subjects, Smith’s latest takes on Michael Jordan. Centered on his first championship year with the Chicago Bulls (1990-91), it moves through the season with vivid descriptions of Jordan’s brilliance on the court while also exploring Jordan’s place in American culture—particularly the ideas about racial progress that he came to represent and the “athlete as brand” corporate identity that he helped to develop.
With sections on the players and coaches Jordan worked with and competed against (Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, Isaiah Thomas and the Bad Boy Pistons, Magic Johnson and the Showtime Lakers) the book moves beyond Jordan to provide a snapshot of the NBA’s cultural significance at the dawn of the 1990s.
Brilliant in its analysis and insight, Smith presents Jordan as both a triumphant and tragic figure, an icon representing what is lost when an athlete ascends to the rare heights of fame, celebrity, and adulation that Jordan reached.
If you want to hear from Smith about the making of the book and his approach to history, check out my conversation with him earlier this year:
1. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession
Is this book truly sports history?
Maybe not. But with its focus on fitness, exercise, and physical education, it’s close enough. Either way, it’s a book worth reading, and one of my favorites of the year.
Ambitious in her approach, Petrzela takes readers through more than a century of ideas, institutions, and individuals that shaped how Americans thought about and engaged in exercise.
One thing good history can do is show change over time. Petrzela does that brilliantly, revealing how fitness and exercise moved from being a sideshow and marginal activity—something that belonged more to the circus than everyday life—to something that was considered essential to a successful life and sense of self.
Along the way, she charts shifting ideals about desirable bodies and explores the change from public investment in fitness as a good for all to a privatized approach in which exercise became a consumer good available to those with time and money. She also considers the ways race, gender, and geography played a role in access and availability.
As a work of cultural and intellectual history, this book shines. At the same time, because Petrzela is an active participant in fitness culture, she writes with the insight and understanding of an insider. She knows just how powerful fitness and exercise can be for an individual’s well-being and sense of self; as a result, she is both critical and empathetic as she explores the meanings of fitness in American culture.
*Bonus: Roger Lipe, Soul Training: Seven Keys To Coaching The Faith Of Elite Sportspeople
This is a different type of book than the others on the list, which focus on history and cultural analysis. But I want to give it a mention because it’s one I read, enjoyed, and endorsed. Here’s what I wrote in my blurb:
"As a historian, I study and write about many of the cultural and social factors that shape sports ministry. But getting to know Roger has reminded me of the beating heart the truly drives sports ministry: it's about relationships with people, time and presence. Written with a spirit of generosity and service, this book provides a wealth of practical wisdom learned from a lifetime of experience. For chaplains and ministers working with athletes and coaches in elite sports, it is sure to be a helpful guide."
So there it is: My favorite new sports books in 2023. There were other books I enjoyed, and some I hope to read in the future. But those were the six that stand out to me the most.
Did you read something I missed? Shoot me an email or leave a note in the comments and let me know.
Here’s hoping 2024 will be another great year for books that explore the deeper significance and meaning of the games we love to watch, play, and follow.
Five new books in American religious history that I enjoyed in 2023:
Lerone Martin, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism
Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation
Andrew Lynn, Saving the Protestant Ethic: Creative Class Evangelicalism and the Crisis of Work
Daniel Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation
Jonathan Eig, King: A Life
Five new books in Christian theology and formation that I enjoyed in 2023:
Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living
Kaitlyn Schiess, Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here
Jeremy Treat, The Atonement: An Introduction
Carmen Joy Imes, Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters
Esau McCaulley, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South
*While McCaulley’s memoir might not fit the theology/formation category, it was my favorite book of the year and has much to offer as a reflection on faithful Christian witness.