More Than Just a Game: Sports in American Life Since 1945 (Columbia Histories of Modern American Life) [Paperback]

Kathryn Jay (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231125356 | ISBN-13: 978-0231125352 | Publication Date: April 11, 2006

More Than Just a Game tracks the explosion of the sports industry in the United States since 1945 and how it has shaped class, racial, gender, and national identities. By examining both professional and intercollegiate sports such as baseball, football, basketball, golf, tennis, and stock car racing, Kathryn Jay looks at the impact of packaging, salary, hype, corporate sponsorship, drug use, and the presence of women and African American players. Jay also considers the persistent belief that sports encourage good citizenship and morality despite a rise in cheating and violent behavior and an unabashed emphasis on financial gain. More Than Just a Game is a fascinating exploration of a phenomenon that has engaged the American imagination and thrilled fans for decades.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
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Review

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 4/1/05)

[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 6/1/05)

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 Spring 2006)

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 )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231125356
• ISBN-13: 978-0231125352
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #426,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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