'The 1904 Olympic Games and Anthropology Days' were a pivotal point in the history of American anthropology and of the Olympic Games. This is because they were anchored within larger transformations in global culture - namely, the decline of empire, the rise of the nation-state, and the ensuing decline of the Victorian evolutionary racial schemes.

The 'laughter of the pygmies' would no longer find a space in sport, which became a 'ritual of records'. This book was previously published as a special issue of "International Journal of the History of Sport".