Lewis Lapham's Wide World of Sports

Lapham's Quarterly is a quirky look at the historical context of things. Those things are usually pretty big—war, money, the environment. They're the sorts of Big Issues that keep us awake when our minds are left to wander—the stuff of philosophers and poets.

And, this month, sportswriters. The latest issue of Lapham's Quarterly takes a historical look at sports and games, ranging from Greco-Roman times to the present day. The 20 century's purple prose is here, as is celebrations of sports in the age of the Olympics (the first one), and a look at 21st-century sports betting. (Lapham also contributed to a new anthology of sportswriting in Harper's Magazine, where he served as editor for nearly three decades—Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper's Magazine—which, like his quarterly, collects sportswriting going back to the 19th century.)