Description
Book Synopsis In the 1870s, Gus Hornsby spread the game of American football around the world like an evangelist and helped establish it in the U.S. heartland. Hornsby seemed destined for greatness as a journalist, inventor, explorer and entrepreneur. His arrogance, greed and an intractable gambling addiction, however, drove him to criminality and cast him into obscurity. But this public ruin led to his greatest accomplishment in prison: personal redemption.
Surprisingly, Hornsby''s meteoric rise and fall intersected with towering influencers of the time, including the women and men who would pioneer the first-wave feminist movement in the United States. This book explores their unexpected connections and interweaves their stories--along with details of the first American football game in the Midwest--to reveal elements of a pivotal moment in American history, both in feminism and sports. More than a biography of a person, it is a story about America--brash, imaginative and seemingly
Table of Contents
- <Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction: A Gambler at the Rubicon
- Part One: The Football
- Game Day, 6:30 a.m.
- Chapter 1. 1846: India
- Game Day, 9:00 a.m.
- Chapter 2. 1866: Madras
- Game Day: A Glimpse of Evanston, Illinois, at High Noon
- Chapter 3. 1873: America
- Game Day, 1:00 p.m.
- Chapter 4. 1875: Chicago
- Game Day, 2:00 p.m.
- Chapter 5. 1876: Chicago
- Part Two: The Fraud
- Game Day, 3:05 p.m.
- Chapter 6. 1882: St. Paul
- Game Day, 3:10 p.m.
- Chapter 7. 1888: Chicago
- Game Day, 3:25 p.m.
- Chapter 8. 1892: St. Paul
- Game Day, 3:30 p.m.
- Chapter 9. 1893: Hastings
- Game Day, 3:45 p.m.
- Chapter 10. 1893: Stillwater
- Game Day, 3:55 p.m.
- Chapter 11. 1895: St. Paul
- Game Day, 4:05 p.m.
- Chapter 12. The Precipice of the American Century
- Game Day, 5:30 p.m.
- Chapter 13. 1926: Evanston
- Game Day, Night
- Chicago Foot-Ball Club : List of Known Members, 1875–1878
- Chapter Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
