About this item
Americans are obsessed with football, yet they know little about the man who shaped the game to make it uniquely technical, physical, and 'man-making' at once. Walter Camp, the "Father of American Football," was the foremost authority on American athletics and arguably the greatest amateur American athlete of his time. In Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man, Julie Des Jardins chronicles the life of the clock company executive and self-made athlete who remade football and redefined the ideal man. As a student at Yale University, Camp was a varsity letterman who led the earliest efforts to codify the rules and organization of football-including the line of scrimmage and "downs"-to make it distinct from English rugby. He also invented the All-America Football Team and wrote some of the first football fiction, guides, and sports page coverage, making him the foremost popularizer of the game.
About the Author
Julie Des Jardins is a historian who writes on American women and gender. Born in Evanston, Illinois, she got her doctorate in history at Brown University and taught at Harvard and CUNY. Her books are conversations between the past, the present, and the future. From Madame Curie, to Walter Camp, to Missy Meloney, her subjects have been specially picked because they shed light on questions that preoccupy us now: the "woman" problem in STEM, the crisis of CTE in football and constructions American masculinity, the dilemma of 'work-life balance,' and the animosity against women in charge.
