After Atalanta

So if you've ever ordered anything from Amazon.com you have probably received emails like this "(NAME), we think that customers who ordered (this title) might be interested in the new release (new release's title)." Amazon is always trying to figure out what you want. And given the inter/multidisciplinarity of my field, I present a particular challenge to Amazon's computer-generated recommendations. The other day I got one stating that if I liked Feminism and the Female Body: Liberating the Amazon Within , that I might now like the new release, GameFace: The Kickass Guide for Women Who Love Pro Sports . They couldn't be more wrong. And the fact that Amazon believes that these two books are similar is astounding. The simple tag: women and sports does not make these books similarly appealing. Feminism and the Female Body is about the potential for social change and empowerment through physical activity. It invokes radical feminist theory, addresses issues of ra...

Once upon a time I was a journalism major; and during this time I learned about the importance of the follow-up story. The "what ever happened to (pick issue or person or event)?" story that was especially good to trot out in the middle of summer when there was nothing going on, as I learned, once upon a time, when I was a reporter in a small town. Following up, as I hope to demonstrate here, is a transferable skill. So here goes. 1. Following up on my post about holiday gifts in the form of books, is the observation, made by my partner in the throes of last-minute Christmas shopping, that about 99.9% of the eff'in books in the sports section at Barnes and Noble are about men. I was told "that if aliens landed on earth and went to Barnes and Nobles they would have no idea that women played sports." I personally think that if aliens landed, we might have bigger problems, but point taken. Because even if the books seem gender neutral, they are not. Case in point, ...

USA Today has a column on the best sports books to give as gifts this year. It's a little disappointing to see that only two are specifically about women. (I haven't read Dave Zirin's Welcome to the Terrordome, which is on the list, but I suspect he mentions women in there somewhere.) The first is Baylor basketball coach Kim Mulkey's memoir, Won't Back Down , which columnist Carol Herwig describes as "rambling" and most appropriate for young adults and young athletes looking for inspiration (at least she didn't say young female athletes!). Pat Summitt has written the foreword of the book. The second is Fast Women: The Legendary Ladies of Racing by Todd McCarthy. Herwig mistakenly refers to it as "revisionist history." Revisionist history is when one changes the "facts" of history to meet an agenda. Those of us who do women's history are not changing the narrative but rather adding to it the stories of women who have been ignore...