Table of Contents

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

Promotional Information

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.

About the Author

Kathryn Jay was most recently an assistant professor of history and director of American studies at Barnard College.

Reviews

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