Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade ReviewJay'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
Table of ContentsIntroduction 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
