Adventures in skating historiography
Traité du patinage (Treatise on Skating) by Georges Deney, was published twice: in 1891 or 1892 and again in 1914. WorldCat gives the date of the first edition as 1891, but Fowler includes it in his list of books published in 1892. Everyone has the year in square brackets, which means nobody's really sure. Fowler's… Continue reading Georges Deny, Traité du patinage
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Around-Ice-Eighty-Years-irreverent/dp/0992851432/ Courtney Jones's autobiography on Amazon UK. Courtney Jones is being the third Jones discussed on this blog, after Robert Jones and Ernest Jones. I have no idea whether they are related. This Jones's achievement is the publication of a memoir, Around the Ice in Eighty Years: An Irreverent Memoir by an Accidental Champion, currently… Continue reading Courtney Jones, Around the Ice in 80 Years
I haven't been writing much here lately, but some new things are up on Schaatshistorie.nl: Two videos from my new Evolution of Skating series: Bone skates and Archetype skates. Those links are to the English versions, they are also in Dutch here and there."Whither bone skates research?", a short article summarizing the state of research… Continue reading New publications
There is no skating in this book. I'm posting it anyway because My name is on the cover.It's officially out today. You can read it for free at Sidestone.com.
Baseball before We Knew It by David Block, 2005. I just read David Block's Baseball before We Knew It. As might be inferred from its title, this book is not about skating. It's still great. I found a lot of parallels to my work on skating history in it. It covers some of the same… Continue reading Baseball before We Knew It
My new article, "The myth of skating history: Building elitism into a sport" has been published in a special issue of Leisure Sciences on myths and mythmaking. It's about the development of figure skating's origin story—that story about medieval Scandinavians traveling and hunting on bone skates that's at the beginning of pretty much every book… Continue reading The myth of skating history
Header to the first issue available in ANNO (July 1, 1880). I recently discovered the Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung archive in ANNO: Historische österreichische Zeitungen und Zeitschriften at the Austrian National Library. Spanning 1880–1927 with a few gaps, it is a fantastic resource for skating history! (Provided you read German.) This newspaper was published in Vienna, home… Continue reading Mrs. Syers in the Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung
When you read old skating books (or this blog), the Field comes up a lot. This post explains what it is and why it's important for skating history. The Field's logo. Image © The British Library Board. Courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive. The Field began in 1853 as a weekly magazine in 1853 aimed… Continue reading The Field
Through June 14, you can get my book Skates Made of Bone: A History for 40% off (meaning $27 instead of the usual $45, plus shipping) by entering the code SPORTS40 on the McFarland website. This code also works for their other sports books, like Skating on Air: The Broadcast History of an Olympic Marquee… Continue reading Skates Made of Bone is on sale!
This is one of the great books of figure skating. It's in German and, as far as I know, has not been translated into English.