pAxel Bundgaard has produced a meaningful work on the important but little-told history of interschool athletics, exploring the introduction and nature of sport in the controlled environment of the American boarding school. pBeginning in the late eighteenth century, American educators looked to the English public school as the educational archetype for producing good men, good Christians, and good leaders. The British incorporation of sport into the process of education, however, took root only slowly in the United States, where it seemed alien to Puritan values extolling hard work and deploring play as wasted time. Only when educators were convinced that sport was an essential tool in the process of raising the next generation by building character, team spirit, and leadership did the informal physical play initiated by students in early schools begin to evolve toward the highly organized, school-sponsored sports of today. pUsing archival material from several eastern boarding schools