Chris Lamb is an author, historian, lecturer, satirist, and columnist. Lamb is the author of 11 books, including two that were published in 2020 (The Art of the Political Putdown: The Greatest Comebacks, Ripostes, and Retorts in History (Chronicle Books) and Sports Journalism: A History of Glory, Fame, and Technology (University of Nebraska Press). He’s written extensively on sports, race, and media. Before becoming a college professor, he worked for newspapers and magazines. Since becoming a professor, he’s written about 250 articles and columns for such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, Los Angeles Times, ESPN.com, and Christian Science Monitor. Lamb is also the former chair of the Journalism and Public Relations department in the IU School of Liberal Arts.
Feature writing, opinion writing, magazine writing, nonfiction writing, communications history, satire, media and society, baseball and myth.
Chris Lamb and Michael Long, Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography; (Westminster John Knox Press, to be published, 2017); Chris Lamb, From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line, ed., (University of Nebraska Press, 2016); Chris Lamb, Wry Harvest: An Anthology of Midwest Humor, ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006); Chris Lamb, Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons in the United States (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2004; issued in paperback, 2006); Chris Lamb, Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004; issued in paperback, 2006). My articles have appeared in the following academic journals: Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism History, and the Journal of American History.
Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball. Winner, Best Book on Journalism and Mass Communication History, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 2013; starred review, Kirkus Review (2012), Top books for 2012, sports and recreation, Choice magazine; Top books for year, Huffington Post; Top 50 baseball books of all time, Peter Drier, Huffington Post; Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training Baseball, Winner, Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award for Best Florida Book in Minority and Ethnographic Studies, from the Florida Historical Society, 2005; Book chapter, “Robinson and Wright Flee Sanford by Sundown,” anthologized in Best Baseball Writing 2005 (New York, NY: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2005), excerpted from Blackout: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training; Macmillan-Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) award for best research in 1999; “L’affaire Jake Powell: The Minority Press Goes to Bat against Segregated Baseball,” 2000; Best Faculty Paper. Minorities and Communication Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications annual conference, 1998. Award for newspaper column, Media Orthopaedic Reporting Excellence (MORE) Awards from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons for a column I wrote for the Indianapolis Star, March 2015; Judge, Pulitzer Prize Award for editorial cartooning, 2012 and 2013; Judge, Herb Block Award for editorial cartooning; 2008.
Sports, media, race, and culture; the meaning and importance of editorial cartooning, satire and humor; the role of the mass/news media on society.
I serve as a book or journal reviewer for the following publications: Journalism History, American Journalism, New York Journal of Books, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, and Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture.
