Bøker av Robert J. Higgs

To examine the social and cultural significance of the athlete hero in American literature, Robert J.

"[A] useful, lucid, intelligent contribution to sports scholarship." Journal of Sport History

An Unholy Alliance offers a dissenting view to the claim by a growing number of scholars that Sports are a new religion. The last few years have seen a spate of books that might be classified by a genre called "Sports Apologetics," that is, arguments defending or celebrating in one way or another the familiar and ongoing alliance in America between sports and religion. Recently, claims have been made by scholars that sports are an authentic religion in and of themselves. They make this startling assertion not by showing connections with the teachings of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, or Moses, but by parallels between the rites of modern games and those of preliterate man that were "religious" in nature because they were designed to propitiate powers and to ward off evil for the tribes employing them. In this evocative book, Higgs and Braswell suggest that while sports may often be good things, they are not inherently divine. They do not focus on wide-spread abuse in sports as evidence for their counterargument. Rather, they question the use of mythological parallels from prehistory as justification for viewing sports as a religion.

An examination of the portrayal of leadership in the western film genre. It analyzes a sample of 25 films, including "Unforgiven" and "Red River", and discusses a variety of leadership styles, motifs, and characteristics giving perspective on several traditional leadership theories.