Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century: An Encyclopedia (3 volume set)
In 2011 American sports generated $200 billion as an industry, more than twice as much as our automobile industry. Where were these funds expended? The editor of Sports in America states that 30 million Americans expended $40 billion on fishing gear alone. And what about the couch potatoes? Sports fans expended $22.4 billion on attending sporting events in 2010. The purpose of this three-volume set is to provide a comprehensive history of American sports as well as an in-depth analysis of how social forces have shaped American sports history (and vice versa).   The work is divided into three major sections, the first of which offers long essays of the history of sports from colonial times to the twenty-first century. The next section—the largest by far—is organized alphabetically and covers athletes, teams, institutions, and topics such as business, media, and immigration. There’s even an entry for Saloons, taverns, and sports bars. The third section includes a chronology, an annotated list of institutions and organizations, and a bibliography. An extensive index in volume 3 points the user to specific references in the text, but there is also a table of contents for each volume and a “Topic Finder” that makes the set a browser’s delight.A cursory search of the literature shows that the two-volume Encyclopedia of Sports in America: A History from Foot Races to Extreme Sports was published in 2009, but that shorter work seems to be a historical treatment. Based on this comparison, Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century is recommended for  academic and larger public library collections. Smaller libraries with Encyclopedia of Sports in America will have to decide if the expenditure is justified. --Jerry Carbone