A01=Charles Fruehling Springwood
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American heritages
American pastoral narratives
Author_Charles Fruehling Springwood
Autograph Session
automatic-update
Baseball Hall
baseball nostalgia cultural geography
Baseball's Origin
Black Sox Scandal
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JHM
Cooperstown mysteries
COP=United Kingdom
Country Music
cultural anthropology
Delivery_Pre-order
Dreams Site
Dyersville sites
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eq_nobargain
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eq_society-politics
Farmer's Museum
Fine Day
Ghost Players
hegemonic practices
heritage site consumption
Language_English
leisure class analysis
Major League Teams
Minor League Teams
myth-making in sports
National Baseball Hall
Negro League
PA=Temporarily unavailable
Pastoral Allegory
Price_€100 and above
PS=Active
softlaunch
sports tourism studies
Town Ball
Wild Man
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9780367010201
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 147 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Jun 2019
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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By what magic is a simple geographical space such as a city or town transformed into cultural significance, into a "place" people travel to, enshrine, mythologize, and consume? What stardust falls upon the ground and in the public's mind that moves us to worship a piece of property that was once an unremarkable field or vacant lot? This book, written with the passion of both baseball fan and cultural anthropologist, unravels the mysteries of Cooperstown, New York–home of the Baseball Hall of Fame–and Dyersville, Iowa–site of the baseball field made enormous by the Hollywood movie Field of Dreams. Charles Springwood provides insight into the postmodern culture of the United States in which tourist sites and "American heritages" are culturally produced and consumed, by studying the people who visit them. The results of his interviews with visitors to these sites speak to issues of youth, innocence, family, domesticity, nation, and the hegemonic practices of the "leisure class." The book provides a reading of America steeped in narratives of pastoralism and nostalgia. Behind it all (the curtain behind which the great wizard sits) is the corporate mind creating an atmosphere of false histories and reconstructed pasts. Springwood pulls the reader's heart in two directions, seeking to honor the beautiful myth of baseball's pastoralism through two sacred geographical sites while also seeking to expose the underpinnings of myth-making to a gentle but constant light.
