The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull), by Thomas Eakins, 1871. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Fund and George D. Pratt Gift, 1934.

Sports & Games

Volume III, Number 3 | summer 2010

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Preamble

Field of Dreams

By Lewis H. Lapham

Play is the making of civilization—how one plays the game more to the point than whether the game is won or lost.

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Blossom and Fade

By John Crowley

Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game is an experience with the pathos and wonder of all games—the game that is the universe.

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Map

Playing Grounds

On the track, in the ring, around the table, and at the target.

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c. 700 BC | Sparta

Title Nine

The athletic, educated, and outspoken women of Sparta.More

1897 | London

The Playing Fields

British war games.More

1854 | Yokohama

A Pair of Fierce Bulls

Commodore Perry is fascinated by sumo.More

Charts & Graphs

Etymology

Sports terminology and definitions.

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Portrait of King James I.

PHotograph of American writer Ernest Hemingway.

Statue of the Persian poet Ferdowsi.

American baseball player Yogi Berra.

Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838

Yogi Berra & Charles Barkley

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Lapham’sDaily

Apollo and Marsyas and the Judgment of Midas, by Melchior Meier, 1581. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011.

Roundtable

The Living Envelope

By Pablo Maurette

The fascination with skin—and its removal. More

DÉjÀ Vu

Stolen Water Is Sweet

2019:

Thieves steal water from Canadian icebergs.

c. 96:

Rome steels itself for the possibility of “puncturers.”

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The World in Time

Alan Rusbridger

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Alan Rusbridger, author of Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now. More

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