Book excerpt: In the 1870s, Gus Hornsby spread the game of American football around the world like an evangelist and helped establish it in the U.S. heartland. Hornsby seemed destined for greatness as a journalist, inventor, explorer and entrepreneur. His arrogance, greed and an intractable gambling addiction, however, drove him to criminality and cast him into obscurity. But this public ruin led to his greatest accomplishment in prison: personal redemption. Surprisingly, Hornsby's meteoric rise and fall intersected with towering influencers of the time, including the women and men who would pioneer the "first-wave" feminist movement in the United States. This book explores their unexpected connections and interweaves their stories--along with details of the first American football game in the Midwest--to reveal elements of a pivotal moment in American history, both in feminism and sports. More than a biography of a person, it is a story about America--brash, imaginative and seemingly limitless in resources and creativity, but overly self-assured and wildly reckless.