a Cultural History

A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Industry covers the period 1800 to 1920. Over this period, sport become increasingly global, some sports were radically altered, sports clubs proliferated, and new team games - such as baseball, basketball and the various forms of football - were created, codified, commercialized, and professionalized. Yet this was also an age of cultural and political tensions, when issues around the role of women, social class, ethnicity and race, imperial relationships, nation-building, and amateur and professional approaches were all shaping sport. At the same time, increasing urbanization, population, real wages and leisure time drove demand for sport ever higher, and the institutionalization and regulation of sport accelerated.

Since coming to an end at the pinnacle of its popularity, Seinfeld's story continues. The show's enduring appeal has helped earn its creators billions of dollars and counting. Many of the most popular and acclaimed comedy series of the twenty-first century are direct descendants of Seinfeld's style, and the show's ideas are now woven into the ways people think and behave. The greatest sitcom of the final years of the broadcast era, Seinfeld broke the rules, changed both television and America forever, and remains a living part of American culture.

A Cultural History of Objects in Antiquity covers the period 500 BCE to 500 CE, examining ancient objects from machines and buildings to furniture and fashion. Many of our current attitudes to the world of things are shaped by ideas forged in classical antiquity. We now understand that we do not merely do things to objects, they do things to us. Reinterpreting objects in Greece and Rome casts new light on our understanding of ourselves and turns the ancient world upside down.

A compelling history of British imperial culture, showing how it was adopted and subverted by colonial subjects around the world