Hero of the Heartland: Billy Sunday and the Transformation of American
Billy Sunday, baseball player for the Chicago Whitestockings, "entrepreneurial evangelist," and the "personification of American manliness," was a phenomenal success in the early part of the 20th century and the object of both great public admiration and criticism. Martin (history, Univ. of Northern Iowa; Howard Kester and the Struggle for Social Justice in the South, 1904-1977) argues that while Sunday was very much a man of his day and nation, he also expounded tratiditional values that the public found comforting and compelling at a time of great economic, social, and demographic change. Beautifully written and based upon exhaustive research, this book is as much a study of America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as it is a treatment of Sunday's life. Though a number of recent Sunday biographies exist, this concise scholarly study is one larger academic libraries will want to acquire even if they already own others such as Roger A. Bruns's Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism.Theresa R. McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.