BOOK REVIEWS the Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA
BOOK REVIEWS Sport History Review, 2014, 45, 79-86 http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/shr.2014-0024 © 2014 Human Kinetics, Inc. The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball By John Matthew Smith. Published in 2013 by University of Illinois Press (344 pp., $24.95 USD, paperback) Reviewed by Damion L. Thomas, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland A number of recent books have focused on the athletes who have contributed to the civil rights movement during the “Athletic Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly, The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball, by John Matthew Smith, uses the UCLA Bruin basketball program as an entry point to the social and political tensions that played out on college campuses as the Bruins were in the midst of a basketball dynasty. Smith’s contributions principally lie in his discussions of the civil rights movement, but also the anti–Vietnam War movement. By placing John Wooden at the center of his analysis, Smith aptly demonstrates the generational and political differences that existed between John Wooden and several of his most politically engaged athletes, including Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton. As such, the central tension that this work explores was between activist student athletes—who were reflective of a youth movement that challenged authority, racism, and the Vietnam War—and those who sought to maintain traditional social arrangements and authoritarian control in collegiate athletics. The Sons of Westwood depicts John Wooden as an exemplar of the archetypical, conservative “good man,” who believed that hard work, strong moral character, and habits were more important than talent.
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