This book presents a detailed, full, and well-documented history of cricket playing in America, focusing on its period of growth in the 1840s and its periodic revivals and the social and cultural factors and circumstances of these revivals of interest. Its argument essentially is that cricket failed to take on, or resisted an American identity but that the sport had considerable appeal and recognized virtues both as a bat-and-ball sport and a "gentlemanly" sport that fostered sportsmanship, control, public manners, and decorum. Cricket found acceptance mainly in the upper leisure class but also appealed to working-class people. Melville argues that cricket resisted changes in the rules or style of play that would have made it a faster-moving sport of alternating cation (offense and defense) and that it remained a club sport that resisted professionalism and organization for profit.