Introduction Sports, the American Way An Athletic Cold War A Brave New World Making Sense of the Sixties Walking the Picket Line and Fighting for Rights Competing on the Open Market High-Priced Heroes Go Global
This book examines major sports, both professional and intercollegiate, from baseball, football, and basketball to golf, tennis, stock car racing, and extreme sports, to explain how sports became a multibillion-dollar industry as well as a major influence on and reflection of American society. Jay also shows how sports have helped shape racial, gender, national, and class identities.
Kathryn Jay was most recently an assistant professor of history and director of American studies at Barnard College.
Jay's exciting-sometimes breathless-commentary on the evolution of sports in late 20th-century America touches all the bases, scoring point after point with her lucid insights and evocative prose. Publishers Weekly [Jay] traces the complex evolution of sports in American society over the course of the past sixty years, explaining how and why the major sports... have become a multibillion-dollar industry, as well as a major influence on and reflection of American society. Forecast Jay's historical and sociological treatment offers many important details on women in sports... This would be a good textbook for an undergraduate sport history class. Recommended for academic libraries. Library Journal More Than Just a Game will be an important source for historians and sociologists in years ahead... -- Lawrence S. Connor Indianapolis Star Her judgments are sharp, her insights astute, and her breadth remarkable...Highly recommended. Choice Dr. Jay has produced a useful and thoughtful volume... it offers much insight into, and raises important questions about, recent developments in American Sport. -- Richard C. Crepeau The Journal of American History A valuable and necessary read... Riveting. -- Terry Martin Aethlon
Jay's exciting-sometimes breathless-commentary on the evolution of sports in late 20th-century America touches all the bases, scoring point after point with her lucid insights and evocative prose. Publishers Weekly [Jay] traces the complex evolution of sports in American society over the course of the past sixty years, explaining how and why the major sports... have become a multibillion-dollar industry, as well as a major influence on and reflection of American society. Forecast Jay's historical and sociological treatment offers many important details on women in sports... This would be a good textbook for an undergraduate sport history class. Recommended for academic libraries. Library Journal More Than Just a Game will be an important source for historians and sociologists in years ahead... -- Lawrence S. Connor Indianapolis Star Her judgments are sharp, her insights astute, and her breadth remarkable...Highly recommended. Choice Dr. Jay has produced a useful and thoughtful volume... it offers much insight into, and raises important questions about, recent developments in American Sport. -- Richard C. Crepeau The Journal of American History A valuable and necessary read... Riveting. -- Terry Martin Aethlon
Most current books on American sports history cover early America up to the present. Jay (director, American studies, Barnard Coll.) instead focuses on the postwar era, which allows her to treat in-depth such topics as the Olympics during the Cold War era, the growth of professional sports, the effect of television on sports, and the economics of sports, as well as drug use and racial and gender issues. The other major work on this time period is Randy Roberts's Winning Is the Only Thing: Sports in America Since 1945. Although Roberts's work is more entertaining and accessible to a general audience, Jay's historical and sociological treatment offers many important details on women in sports missing from Roberts's book and covers 13 more years (through 2002). This would be a good textbook for an undergraduate sport history class. Recommended for academic libraries supporting such undergraduate courses.-Christina L. Hennessey, Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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