The view on motor control and coordination of movements is multidirectional: from theoretical, through biomechanical, to the detailed insight into the neuro-muscular system including motor neurons and muscle fibers. The neurobiological approach seems to be on top of the current scientific interest of leading laboratories that specialize in the field of motor behavior and human movement control. This field has grown dramatically over the last decade, and it seems now to be more difficult to exchange knowledge about new advances between researchers who use different methods working on the cellular-membrane level, motor system morphology, systemic connections of neurons, properties of motor units, spinal reflexes, or kinematics of whole muscles.

The book by Timothy C. Cope is the seventh title published in the series “Methods and New Frontiers in Neuroscience”. The previous books in this series covered other topics in neuroscience and neuroengineering. Motor Neurobiology of the Spinal Cord is a multidisciplinary study presenting principles and concepts of the structural basis and functions of the spinal cord, motor neurons, and feedback from the muscle and peripheral receptors. The studied results and concepts have been described using modern research methods applied in this type of studies. Timothy C. Cope is a professor of physiology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and his scientific work has focused on sensorimotor integration in the spinal cord and the adaptation of the central and peripheral nervous systems to injury.

The editor of the book invited thirty-four contributing authors, from leading laboratories in the USA, Canada and Denmark. The book contains thirteen chapters, each concerning different problems, written by the leading group of experienced scientists. The authors explore the following issues: genetic basics of the spinal circuits; membrane properties and ion channels of motoneurons in the spinal cord; synaptic connections and neuromodulatory functions of cells in neuronal spinal centers; organization of spinal motor networks and pattern generators; afferent feedback during human walking and other motor behavior; animal-based models of investigation of human motor system; plasticity of motor units; motoneurons and synapses after injury; as well as proprioceptive feedback after chronic spinalization. A few chapters present the ongoing efforts to achieve understanding of some long-studied issues, yet incompletely understood. The book contains original figures, charts and photographs, and each chapter is followed by a comprehensive list of references, making it possible to find sources required to broaden one’s knowledge about the presented subject or to compensate for any omissions. A valuable tool that helps to move between chapters which often overlap with respect to the subject matter is the alphabetical index of key words.

The book is not a manual or a comprehensive review of the basic neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the sensorimotor nervous system. It is a highly specialized insight into new discoveries at the sub-cellular, cellular and systemic levels of the spinal mechanisms of movement, as well as into modern methods applied in several laboratories in studies on physiology and pathological states of the motor system. The book aims primarily to cover all ‘hot topics’ of contemporary motor neurobiology, from genetics to kinematics, from animal experiments to methods applicable in humans, from normal conditions to effects of injury and disease of the neuromuscular and afferent-efferent systems. Moreover, the wide spectrum of advanced techniques, including cytochemistry, optical imaging and exquisite mechanical or electrical analyses provides the reader with an opportunity to place his or her research work in a broader context. This is an innovative approach to issues related to sensorimotor control, mostly at the spinal cord level. Despite its highly selective character with respect to the discussed topics, this excellent publication presents a broad, multidisciplinary view on conceptual and technical advances in the field of motor control. This rich source of information may be useful not only for neurobiologists working directly on issues presented in the book, but also for researchers in other fields related to biomechanics of motor behavior, kinesiology or physiotherapy.

Piotr Krutki

This collective work contains the proceedings of the 4^th Conference of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport (ISHPES) and Trim and Fitness International Sport for All Association (TAFISA) held in Duderstadt, Germany. Except for the United States and some other important English-speaking countries, the rest of the world including countries that so far have not been very active in the international area of sport sciences seems to be well represented by particular scholars. The collection contains such excellent papers as Joseph Maquire’s Body Cultures: Diversity, Sustainability, Globalisation, where the author discusses effects of sportisation and globalisation of sport and attempts at creating a scientific model for global sports processes. In Roland Renson’s Ludocdiversity. Extinction, Survival and Invention of Movement Culture, the author suggests a new term: “ludodiversity”, i.e. cultural differentiation in human play and games. It is definitely an interesting concept but in my opinion slightly unusual, which will probably thwart its further wider usage.

Lamartin DaCosta’s paper Mapping Worldwide Trends of Traditional Sports and Games tries to explain in an ambitious way how traditional sports have been preserved in different regions of the world, and to what extent they follow a decreasing or increasing tendency. In the paper DaCosta also tries to analyse particular aspects and factors associated with the contemporary situation of traditional and folk sports, such as commercialisation, ethnocentrism, participation and interest of different age groups, etc. This task seems to be a pioneering one; however, a serious weak point in DaCosta’s research is the quantitative basis of traditional sports and games for his analysis and conclusions. He discusses merely sixty sports and games from all the continents, which is a number too insufficient for any comprehensive evaluation. The recent World Sports Encyclopedia published under the UNESCO’s auspices (2003) includes over three thousand sports chosen from over seven thousand local sports and games. This Encyclopedia was published shortly after the ISHPES Conference was held, and DaCosta carried out his research having no realization of the quantity of traditional sports still in existence all over the world. But it does not change the opinion that the research on a relatively small group of 60 sports and games cannot suffice as representative enough. This research should be eventually repeated on a much wider basis and information provided, for instance, by the mentioned Encyclopedia.

The publication edited by G. Pfister contains 31 papers altogether and it would be impossible to discuss all of them here. Some should be at least mentioned for various reasons. The paper Unity and Diversity in Traditional Games in Europe by Eric de Vroede discusses the two crucial concepts referred to in the title in the context of current integration processes in Europe. Carlos López von Vriessen made an excellent ethnological analysis of chueca, a traditional game of the Chilean Indians. We are proud that “Studies in Physical Culture and Tourism” belongs to those international publications with whose help Professor Von Vriessen initiated some time ago his valuable research on similar subjects concerning traditional games of the Mapuche Indians and games played on Rapanui (Easter Island). Jørn Møller’s paper The Workshop of Sports History - an Arena for Traditional Games is based the author’s own experience associated with his work on a project to develop studies and his famous Park of Traditional Games in Gerlev, Danemark.

While the superb research of von Vriessen and Møller is based on thorough academic understanding of ethnographic and cultural aspects of traditional games, some other papers included in the proceedings seem fairly week from this point of view. We understand that the ISHPES conference was basically a historical conference; however, the subject of traditional sports requires a broad ethnographic and cultural background, which cannot be found in expected proportions in some papers. They can serve as a proof that the matter of advanced research on traditional sports is still in progress and requires more meetings and conferences to develop proper methodology concerning and combining the ethnology, history and practice of the sports and games in question.

Wojciech Lipoński

This is a unique publication in which one can find language equivalents of English sports terminology in 15 other languages. The dictionary has been a result of an incomparably huge and admirable task consisting of gathering extensive lexical material from many languages. It is understandable that such wide assumptions must have limited the number and content of many entries to the most basic ones. The selection of sports terminology in such a situation is always disputable but generally justified. The language of sport is a “multi-storey building”, with a multitude of special variations and registers, for instance, different technical training terms in particular sports, terms of anatomy, equipment, sports venues; language of officiating, slang of athletes, fans and coaches; language of particular sciences associated with sport such as sport medicine, sport sociology and psychology. There is no one unified language of sports media either; there are different language variations for newspapers, for the radio with its emphasis on oral description “what is not seen”, and for television where the reporters only supplement what can be seen at the stadium.

All these aspects of the sport language seem impossible to be included in one big dictionary attempting to explain sports terms in 15 languages. A complete dictionary of this sort should consist of no fewer than several huge volumes.

Our admiration for Herbert and Gerald Haag’s Dictionary cannot be diminished by some critical remarks. Even the most distinguished scholarly works have their weaker points. The first question which comes to mind is what was the reason for considering some national languages while ignoring others? For instance, the dictionary includes Hungarian and Portuguese sports terminology, although the population of these countries amounting to about 20mln people altogether, is incomparably smaller than say, the population of Poland with the Polish language used by nearly 40 million people - a nation of over 200 hundred Olympic medallists and over 300 world records in different sports, not to mention an incomparably higher number of academic centres of physical education. However, the Polish language is not considered at all in the Dictionary published in Germany, where its closest neighbour is not always seen as an important partner, not only in sport.

The majority of entries in Haags’ Dictionary are roughly technical sport science terms. Sport humanities entries are not left out, but in a number of cases they lack a deeper semantic insight. For instance, in the entry on Mass sport we find information it is a “term for leisure sport that has been used since the 1950s, which does, however, set its focus on the individuals involved in sport” (p. 293). The adjective “mass” used in this entry seems rather improper for some reasons, because the semantic understanding of “mass” excludes individuality and, moreover, implies losing it by mass actions that absorb individuality rather than stress out its personal character. When we talk, for instance, about such well-known terms as “mass market”, “mass media” and consequently “mass sport”, we understand them rather as “viewed as a whole”, depersonalized, deindivindualised, not as equipped with peculiar characteristic aimed at individual needs of one person. This is why in the Polish language we discriminate between “sport masowy” (“mass sport”) and “sport powszechny” (“sport universally accessible”). The term mass sport in Poland seems to be a remnant of the past communist ideology and the general assumption of the comminist system: society treated as a whole, not as a group of individual human beings. This is a substantial difference which should be, in my opinion, taken into account when we interpret sport on the terminological basis. I would give “mass sport” two different definitions: 1) in communist countries, sport regarded as an ideological factor, accessible for all en mass but disregarding individual aspirations of particular members of the society; 2) contemporary remnant of communist terminology, used in a similar sense for sport diminishing individuality by its commercialised and globalised character, and displaying unification tendency in the form of exercises and recreation, health behaviour, equipment; characterised also by mass imitation of medialised champions of competitive sports, their manners, clothing, etc.” Perhaps some other features could be added as well; however, to combine the expression of “mass sport” with “focusing on individual” seems absurd.

Wojciech Lipoński