The editors use the unique lens of the history of sports to examine ethnic experiences in North America since 1840. Comprised of 12 original essays and an Introduction, it chronicles sport as a social institution through which various ethnic and racial groups attempted to find the way to social and psychological acceptance and cultural integration. Included are chapters on Native Americans, Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Canadians, African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Hispanics, and several more, showing how their sports participation also provided these communities with some measure of social mobility, self-esteem, and a shared pride.

GEORGE EISEN is Professor and Coordinator of Sociocultural Study and Sport and Play at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is the author of Children and Play in the the Holocaust (1988), a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year, and Understanding Leisure (1990), as well as numerous articles in The Journal of Sport History, Play & Culture, The International Journal of the Sociology of Sport, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, and many others.
DAVID K. WIGGINS is Professor of Physical Education at George Mason University. He is the author of numerous articles dealing primarily with African-American involvement in sport, in such journals as The Journal of Sport History, Canadian Journal of History of Sport, The International Journal of the History of Sport, and Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.

Preface
Introduction by George Eisen
Early European Attitudes toward Native American Sports and Pastimes by George Eisen
For Identity, for Cause, for Health, and Fitness: Forty-Eighters and the Rise of the Turnverein Movement in America by Robert Knight Barney
A Home In the South: The Turners of Galveston, Texas, 1840-1865 by K.B. Wamsley
The Shamrock and the Eagle: Irish-Americans and Sport in the Nineteenth Century by Ralph C. Wilcox
Jews and Baseball: A Cultural Love Story by Eric Solomon
The Italian-American Sporting Experience by Carmelo Bazzano
"Diversionary" Tactics: The Recreation and Leisure Pursuits of Japanese Americans in World War II Internment Camps by Alison M. Wrynn
The Quest for Identity: The Notion of Double-Consciousness and the Involvement of Black Athletes in American Sport by David K. Wiggins
Sport in Philadelphia's African-American Community, 1865-1900 by J. Thomas Jable
Sport and the Americanization of Ethnic Women in Chicago by Gerald R. Gems
"We Raced for Socks and Sweaters--Not that Useless Bourgeois Stuff, Cups and Medals": Radical Immigrants and the Workers' Sport Federation of Canada, 1924-37 by Bruce Kidd
Sport and Social Mobility among African-American and Hispanic Athletes by Merrill J. Melnick and Donald Sabo