Genre: Sports

Option One: read three books about the same sport. Your paper will examine the attitudes related to the sport. What do these attitudes tell us about America?

Option Two: read books about three different sports. What do they have in common? How are they different from one another? What do the attitudes related to all three sports tell us about America?

Baseball

• Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris
• The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
• Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmie Breslin
• The Natural by Bernard Malamud
• Teammates by David Halberstam
• Say It Ain’t So, Joe!: The True Story of Shoeless Joe Jackson by Donald Gropman
• The Summer Game OR Five Seasons by Roger Angell
• You Know Me, Al by Ring Lardner

Basketball

• Counting Coup: a True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn by Larry Colton
• Hoop Dreams by Ben Joravsky
• In These Girl Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais
• My Losing Season by Pat Conroy
• A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein

Football

• Paper Lion by George Plimpton
• Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger
• Three Bricks Shy of a Load by Roy Blount, Jr.
• When Pride Still Mattered : A Life Of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss

Miscellaneous

• It's not about the Bike by Lance Armstrong
• The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb (running)
• All American : The Rise and Fall of Jim Thorpe by Bill Crawford
• The Best American Sports Writing of the Century by David Halberstam, Glenn Stout
  Read at least 200 pages of writing related to the sport of your choice. Only the most dedicated need to read all 700+ pages.
• The Professional by W. C. Heinz (boxing)
• Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway (bullfighting)
• The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield (golf)
• Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters by Joan Ryan

Updated October 4, 2010.