New Books In Biography

In anticipation of Super Bowl 50, Sports Illustrated and WIRED magazines teamed up to speculate about the state of football fifty years from now, at the time of Super Bowl 100. Of course, the big question that arises when considering the future of the football is whether the sport will even exist decades from now, given the evidence of severe brain disease in many former players. Historian Julie Des Jardins argues that if we want to gain a better understanding of the current challenges to football, it’s best to look back to its early decades. Football had its critics from the very beginning, when young men were severely injured and even killed on the field. The sport had to reform itself to survive. As Julie shows in her new biography of legendary Yale coach Walter Camp, even the founding father of American football recognized that change was necessary for the game to continue. In Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man (Oxford University Press, 2015), Julie presents the first scholarly biography of the man