In a world where televised sports are ubiquitous—soccer and American football, baseball and basketball, tennis and volleyball, hockey and golf, car racing and horse racing, on and on, all year round—it's hard to imagine the very different world of American sports a century ago. One point of entry is Alan Katchen's biography of Abel Kiviat, an athlete who set fire to many middle distance events in the second decade of the 20th century. By the time he was in his early twenties, Kiviat held world records in the 1500 meters, indoor mile, indoor half-mile, and 1000 yards. A cabin mate of the famous Jim Thorpe during the 1912 Olympics, Kiviat earned a silver medal in Stockholm's 1500 meters. Though lost to public memory, Kiviat was a household name at a time when track & field loomed larger on the sporting scene than it does today. Fans followed heated contests between rival athletic clubs, and sports pages were filled with news and results.

Katchen researched Kiviat's life for nearly a decade. Though not a book to turn to for its poetry or theatricalization of the athlete's life, Katchen's biography persuasively argues that Kiviat, nicknamed "the Hebrew Runner," was effectively acculturated into American society through the sport of track & field.

"He was a complicated man," says Katchen, who teaches courses on racial and ethnic relations at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. The author sets the tone by examining the household of Abel's youth in Staten Island, under the rule of a father who was detached and difficult to live with. "It was a psychologically tense family, and though I'm not a determinist, that did affect him and each of his siblings."

The book is the product of prodigious research, with Katchen's historical digging taking him to stops throughout the United States and abroad. Earlier in his career, Katchen spent 23 years with the Anti-Defamation League, during most of which he served as regional director in various parts of the country. He had originally ...

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