Fame to Infamy
Fame to Infamy
Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace
Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace follows the paths of sports figures who were embraced by the general populace but who, through a variety of circumstances, real or imagined, found themselves falling out of favor. The contributors focus on the roles played by athletes, the media, and fans in describing how once-esteemed popular figures find themselves scorned by the same public that at one time viewed them as heroic, laudable, or otherwise respectable.
The book examines a wide range of sports and eras, and includes essays on Barry Bonds, Kirby Puckett, Mike Tyson, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, Branch Rickey, Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, and Jim Brown, as well as an afterword by noted scholar Jack Lule and an introduction by the editors. Fame to Infamy is an interdisciplinary volume encompassing numerous approaches in tracing the evolution of each subject’s reputation and shifting public image.
David C. Ogden is associate professor of communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is coeditor of Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace; A Locker Room of Her Own: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Female Athletes; and Reconstructing Fame: Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations, all published by University Press of Mississippi. Joel Nathan Rosen is associate professor of sociology at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is author of The Erosion of the American Sporting Ethos: Shifting Attitudes Toward Competition and From New Lanark to Mound Bayou: Owenism in the Mississippi Delta,and coauthor of Black Baseball, Black Business: Race Enterprise and the Fate of the Segregated Dollar, published by University Press of Mississippi. He is founding coeditor of a five-volume collection that explores the forging and maintenance of the reputations of celebrity athletes: Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace; A Locker Room of Her Own: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Female Athletes; Reconstructing Fame: Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations; More than Cricket and Football: International Sport and the Challenge of Celebrity;and The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle, all published by University Press of Mississippi.
