Walter Camp: Football and the Modern ManJulie DesJardins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Abstract

Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man Julie Des Jardins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.Debates are swirling around the vices and virtues of football. Does the game promote unnecessary violence? Are the known injuries worth the risk? Why does it remain the most popular sport in the United States? Julie Des Jar dins's recent biography, Walter Camp: Football and Manhood in America, provides a valuable historical perspective on the origins of football and its continued appeal to Americans. She uses the life of Walter Camp, The Father of American Football, to analyze the cultural shifts in America at the turn of the twentieth century. She deftly traces Camp from his childhood in New Flaven, Connecticut, to his collegiate career at Yale, to his occupation as a salesman, to his advisory role in writing football's rules, and to his illustrious literary career. For writing as much as he did with thirty books and over 250 articles, he left few letters or journal entries discussing his inner feelings or daily activities. Des Jardins compensates for the lack of sources by piecing together his publications with others' descriptions of him. Camp's multifaceted life and commenters allow Des Jardins to intertwine the changing cultural tides as the nineteenth century turned to the twentieth. She argues, Flis story is the tale of a particular New England, Anglo-Saxon set of college-educated men. And yet, viewed more broadly, it reveals just how much the developments of football and American manhood have cut across races and classes and been indelibly intertwined with each other (xiii). To defend her thesis, she focuses on Camp's shaping American football and his defining American masculinity.Though Walter Camp worked for the New Haven Clock Company throughout his life, Des Jardins focuses almost exclusively on his relationship with football. It was the game, not watches, which made him one of the most influential culture shapers of the period. She recounts how, from his time as an undergraduate athlete, his football prowess brought him into contact with the era's most influential men. After recounting his playing career, she weaves together Camp's role in the yearly rewriting of football's rules and his bending to the cultural demands projected onto the sport. Camp, she insists, built malleability into the fabric of football. For example, the 1903 rules committee changed the lines on the field turning the familiar gridiron into a waffle iron to better track player movements (172). …