More than Just a Game (History of Modern American Life Series): Sports in American Life since 1945

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Every aspect of the sporting world has exploded in the years since 1945. Player salaries, the cost of fielding a team, the hype surrounding games, the number of cameras on the sidelines, the wealth from corporate sponsorships, the level of drug use, the number of women and African Americans participating, the global reach of games: all of these have contributed to a shift in the way Americans perceive the meaning of sports. More Than Just a Game traces these complex developments over the past sixty years.This book examines major sports, both professional and intercollegiate, from baseball, football, and basketball to golf, tennis, stock car racing, and extreme sports. It also covers the political and social ramifications of the Olympic games and the growing appetite for recreational sports. How did the National Basketball Association go from a podunk regional league to an international powerhouse? Why did the 1973 tennis "Battle of the Sexes" between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs matter? How does Lance Armstrong's rise to the peak of the cycling -and advertising -world exemplify recent developments in sports? In answering these questions, Kathryn Jay illustrates how sports have helped to shape racial, class, gender, and national identities in the United States. She also shows how athletes have been packaged as consumer products to be bought and sold. Nevertheless, this book acknowledges the beauty of sports and is replete with transcendent moments that have engaged the American imagination and thrilled generations of fans.More Than Just a Game argues that a powerful emphasis on winning has created a fascinating duality in how Americans understand sports. Theproblems created by cheating, drug use, violent behavior, and an emphasis on financial gain have been bemoaned as representing the decline of the nation itself. Yet Americans continue to believe sports encourage good citizenship and morality, and we celebrate athletes as national heroes. When people dismiss sports as "just a game," they miss much of what makes them so vital to American daily life. In the United States, sports have rarely been just fun and games.

SYNOPSIS

Jay (history, Columbia University) traces the development of both professional and collegiate sports since the Second World War, notes the accomplishments of many great players and teams, places sports in a broader social and cultural context, and explores the ambiguities that arise when commerce and heroism meet. A few b&w photographs are provided. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Taking the insidious influence of sports in culture as a green flag, Jay (an assistant professor of history at Barnard College) drives her thesis through several hairpin turns until she crosses the finish line triumphantly. Jay expertly details the development of sports in America from the almost complete decimation of professional baseball during World War II to the evolution of leisure sports such as golf and the chaotic world of drugs and cheating scandals marking professional sports in the 1990s. In the 1940s, sports provided the language and the models for defining both democratic society and masculinity while at the same time confronting segregation not always successfully, observes Jay in the sports world. By the 1980s, athletes played out Cold War tensions on the field, the hockey rink, and the basketball court as the quality of sporting teams supposedly symbolized the political structure of different countries, e.g., the Soviets were brutes and the U.S. athletes were gentlemanly Horatio Algers striving to bring peace to the playing fields. By the end of the 20th century, Jay points out, several sports retained the aura of fair play and democracy of the 1940s notably NASCAR while others endured turmoil and scandal. 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. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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