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What do Britney Spears, pet rocks, Star Wars, and Seinfeld have in common? They?re all part of American popular culture. Whether you are a movie buff, pop music fan, TV trivia expert, or sports nut, you?ll love this book!

Filled with fun and entertaining crosswords from puzzlemaster Charles Timmerman, this book tests puzzlers? knowledge of all things popular in our society and history, including:

• Music
• Food
• Celebrities
• Youth culture
• Television
• Fads

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Updated, revised and enhanced with new features, the fifth edition of Making Sense of Sports is the biggest and strongest yet.

Ellis Cashmore's unique multidisciplinary approach to the study of sports remains the only introduction to combine anthropology, biology, economics, history, philosophy, psychology and sociology with cultural and media studies to produce a distinct unbroken vision of the origins, development and current state of sports. New chapters on exercise culture and the moral climate of sports support a thoroughly overhauled text that includes fresh material on Islam, sports commerce and corruption.

Now packed with teaching supplements, including access to a dedicated online resource headquarters with video podcasts of 21 chapter outlines from the author (http://tinyurl.com/373oyvr), online quizzes, and an additional 21^st chapter on depression and mental health in sports and exercise, the new edition contains a cornucopia of thought boxes, as well as guides to further reading, capsule explanations and model essays. In short, Making Sense of Sports is an all-purpose introduction to the study of sports.

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The Wonder Team describes in detail the chronology of the year 1927, when the great New York Yankees became theWonder Team--probably baseball's best team ever. That club included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Waite Hoyt, Tony Lazzeri,Earle Combs, Herb Pennock, Bob Meusel, and Wilcy Moore. Also part of the narrative are owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert,manager Miller Huggins, business manager Ed Barrow, and scout Paul Krichell. No participant of that great team isomitted. The author's chronicle is thoroughly buttressed by interviews, research, and records.

In detailing the events leading to the 1927 World Series, Trachtenberg weaves players' profiles and histories, along with those of the Yankee owner, management, coaches, scouts, trainer, and batboy/mascot. The reader becomes acquaintedwith players' personalities, baseball skills, records, and hijinks on and off the field. Players' backgrounds, how theybecame involved in the great ball club, how they were viewed by the press, how their careers flourished and waned--all ofthis is covered in The Wonder Team. Also included are 1927 stats and photos from Yankee archives. The Wonder Team is the culmination of a long-held ambition to chronicle the remarkable season and accomplishments of the great 1927 Yankees. In 1984, realizing that the reminiscences of old ballplayers were not only part of baseball history but also of their times, he beganinterviewing the surviving 1927 Yankees. Their recollections, and much intensive research, have resulted in this book. ... Read more

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This book is about sports and national identity in various countries and regions, which takes into account the effect of globalization. ... Read more

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Body Cultures explores the relationship between the body, sport and landscape. This book presents the first critically edited collection of Henning Eichberg's seven provocative essays into "body culture". Eichberg, a well-known scholar in continental Europe who draws upon the ideas of Elias, Focault, Habermas and others, is now attracting considerable interest fromsociologists, historians and geographers. This collection has been extensively edited to highlight Eichberg's most important arguments and themes. The editors focus particularly on Eichberg's provocative claims about the notion of space: from the micro-scale of how human bodies "express" themselves or are formally "disciplined" through their movements in space, to the macro-scale of how bodies and cultures are invented and contested in connection with the self- identities they come to possess in given locations. Introductory essays provide clear explanations and interpretations as well as a biography of Eichberg. ... Read more

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An overview of all sorts of behaviour related to sexual harassment, its impact on the world of sport and specifically on the participants. This volume is written to answer questions raised by health and physical education students and athletes (both amateur and professional), and sport personnel (such as coaches, trainers and administrators). It offers guidelines in dealing with social, psychological and legal issues. It also discusses strategies to prevent and control sexual harassment in the world of sport. A glossary of terms and a guide to resources for sexual harassment are included for the reader's reference. The resource section includes telephone numbers and addresses of national organizations, national hotlines, and Web sites for some of the leading professional journals and organizations dealing with sexual harassment. Readers are encouraged to consult them for additional information. ... Read more

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In Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain, Jeffrey Hill examines the social history of recreation, including: the development of spectator sports; the attractions of the cinema; tourism; the role of the media; the significance of clubs and societies. Commercial, voluntary and state "sectors" of sport and leisure provision are all included, and relationships of social class, gender and ethnicity in sport and leisure are given prominence in an analysis which spans the whole century. ... Read more

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Running is one of the world's most widely practiced sports and recreations but until now it has intended to elude serious study outside of the natural sciences. John Bale brings the sport into the realm of the humanities by drawing on sources including literature, poetry, film, art and sculpture as well as statistics and training manuals to highlight the tensions, ambiguities and complexities that lie hidden beneath the commonplace notion of running.
The text explores both local and personal, as well as communal and global aspects of running and its practitioners. It examines the streets, tracks and stadiums where athletes run, the races in which they compete, and the running relationships such as exist between the athlete and the coach, between runners and between the athlete and spectator. It discusses the importance of speed and records, how running has been used to symbolise resistance and transgression, and the extent to which it can be associated with a healthy lifestyle.
Running Cultures provides new ways of seeing a familiar sporting phenomenon. it will appeal to both students and researchers with an interest in running in particular, and sport and leisure cultures more generally. ... Read more

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This book provides an inter-disciplinary examination of the relationship between sport, spirituality and religion. It covers a wide-range of topics, such as prayer and sport, religious and spiritual perspectives on athletic identity and ‘flow’ in sport, theological analysis of genetic performance enhancement technologies, sectarianism in Scottish football, a spiritual understanding of sport psychology consultancy in English premiership soccer and how Zen may be useful in sports performance and participation. As modern sport is often intertwined with commercial and political agendas, this book also provides an important corrective to the “win at all costs” culture of modern sport, which cannot always be fully understood through secular ethical inquiry. This is a unique and important addition to the current literature for a wide-range of fields including theology and religious studies, psychology, health studies, ethics and sports studies.

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The cultural ubiquity, political prominence and economic significance of contemporary sport present fertile terrain for its critical socio-cultural analysis. From corporate and media dominated mega-events like the Olympic Games, to state programmes for nation-building and health promotion, to the cultural politics of "race", gender, sexuality, age and disability, sport is so profoundly marked by relations of power that it lends itself to critique and deconstruction.

Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport brings together leading experts on sport to address these issues and to reflect on the continued appeal of sport to people across the globe, as well as on the forms of inequality that sport both produces and highlights. Including a Foreword by Harry Cleaver and Afterword by Michael Bérubé, this book assesses the impact of this work on the fields of ‘mainstream’ Marxism and cultural studies. Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport is centred on three vital questions:

• Is Marxism still relevant for understanding sport in the twenty-first century?

• Has Marxism been preserved or transcended by cultural studies?

• What is the relationship between theory and intervention in the politics of sport?

The result is a unique and diverse examination of modern sports culture. The first book published on the relationship between sport and Marxism for over twenty years, Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport is an invaluable resource for students of sport sociology, Marxism, and cultural studies at all levels. 

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An impressive amount of literature, particularly literature on soccer and baseball, has appeared since Joseph Arbena's 1989 bibliography, An Annotated Bibliography of Latin American Sport. This new bibliography includes titles published during the past decade as well as a few items omitted from the earlier bibliography. Arranged topically, it includes sections on indigenous traditions, Iberian background, the National Period in Middle America and in South America, and Hispanic sports and sportsmen in the United States. ... Read more

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Youth Culture and Sport critically interrogates and challenges contemporary articulations of race, class, gender, and sexual relations circulating throughout popular iterations of youth sporting culture in late-capitalism. Written against the backdrop of important changes in social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics taking place in corporate culture’s war on kids, this exciting new volume marks the first anthology to critically examine the intersection of youth culture and sport in an age of global uncertainty. Bringing together leading scholars from cultural studies, gender studies, sociology, sport studies, and related fields, chapters range in scope from 'action' sport subcultures and community redevelopment programs to the cultural politics of white masculinity and Nike advertising. It is a must read for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of the role sport plays in the construction of experiences, identities, practices, and social differences of contemporary youth culture.

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In 1945 Byron Nelson's unthinkable feat of winning eleven straight PGA events earned him $200 and a case of cereal in exchange for appearing on a Wheaties box.In 2003 LeBron James had barely finished high school before signing a $90 million promotional agreement with Nike.CBS reluctantly paid $50,000 to televise the Squaw Valley Olympic Games in 1960, but over forty years later, NBC eagerly bid $820 million for the rights to broadcast the 2010 Games.Cherished sports traditions such as the Green Jacket, the Wrigley Field ivy, the Twelfth Man, and the Stanley Cup did not start out as lucrative icons, but as novelties.Successful sports institutions like the Olympics, the NBA, the Super Bowl, the Boston Marathon, and the Tour de France all have roots in events, companies, and personalities from an era more characterized by uncertainty than riches.

From the very first time a promoter put a fence around a field and sold a ticket, to the NFL's most recent multibillion-dollar TV contract, the business of sports has evolved around a simple concept: attracting a captive audience for profit.That "simple concept," over time, built a foundation that today supports the fields of licensing, sponsorship, facility management, and electronic media upon which the games, money, and cheers depend.SPORTS, INC. traces the fascinating evolution of sports from an arena of competition to an entertainment industry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Overview: Informative & Instructive
I bought this book for the discussion on current sports marketing applications and methods. After reading those parts first, I then became absorbed with the narration on the background of the sports business industry itself which goes back into the late 1800's.

The historical information is presented in stories and case studies of successes, failures, false starts and the big dreams of those who believed in sports as a profitable entertainment entity. The book closes by showing how companies, TV partners and customers all gravitate to sports in order to market products and services and uses more case studies to show how the whole enterprise works.

It is a great overview of both the supply and demand sides of sports: highly recommended for any sports fan and especially for those who work in sports, or for companies that sponsor sports programs. ... Read more

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In the GameGay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity

Eric Anderson - Author

SUNY series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations

Summary

Examines the relationship between gay male athletes, sport, and American masculinity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Accepting
Anderson, Eric. "In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity", SUNY Press, 2005.

Accepting

Amos Lassen

I just came across Eric Anderson's book about gay athletes and was surprised that it had not yet been reviewed. Gay athletes have been in the news so I naturally thought that there must have been some interest in the topic. Maybe now there will be.
Anderson's work is based upon interviews with both openly gay and closeted athletes. He explains how homophobia is practiced in sports and how gay athletes manage to get around it. We read individual experiences and we see that athletes are slowly coming out, not being content to be treated as second class citizens. The views we have had of masculinity have changed greatly in the last few years and we no longer need a "don't ask, don't tell" on the playing field like some feel we need in the armed services.
Just as the gay lifestyle has begun to go mainstream and no longer regarded as a sickness so have gay athletes been able to come to terms with whom they are and thereby come out. This is only the beginning and I think there will be more coming out as time passes.
... Read more

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Exercise for women is a heavily-laden social and embodied experience. While exercise promotion has become an increasingly visible part of health campaigns, obesity among women is rising, and studies indicate that women are generally less physically active than men. Women’s (lack of) exercise, therefore, has become a public concern, and physiological and psychological research has attempted to develop more effective exercise programs aimed at women. Yet women have a complex relationship with embodiment and physical activity that is difficult for quantitative scientific approaches to explore. This book addresses this neglect by providing a much-needed feminist, qualitative social analysis of women and exercise. The contributors, drawn from across Europe and North America investigate the ways women experience exercise within the context of the global fitness industry. All the authors take a specifically feminist perspective in their analyses of the fit, feminine body, exploring media images and the global branding of fitness products, the relationship between exercise and fat, the construction of physical activity within health discourse, and the lived experience of the exercising body. The collection explores the diversity of women’s experiences of exercise in relation to age, ethnicity and body size. The book is essential for anyone interested in health promotion, sport and exercise or the social and cultural study of gender and embodiment.

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Australians are surrounded by beaches. But this enclosure is more than a geographical fact for the inhabitants of an island continent; the beach is an integral part of the cultural envelope. This work analyzes the history of the beach as an integral aspect of Australian culture. ... Read more

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Understanding Sport Culture traces and analyzes the development of the modern field of sport from its ancient and medieval precursors (the festivals of Greece and Rome, and games such as folk football), through to its inception in the mid-nineteenth century as a set of activities designed to instill character and discipline in students in exclusive British public schools, up to its transformation into a global institution and popular spectacle. The narrative also focuses on and provides a detailed account of the gradual coming together of sport and the media. It explains how this relationship has accentuated sport's status as one of the most important sites in contemporary culture, while simultaneously threatening its existence.
... Read more

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Critical Readings: Sport, Culture and the Media contains a broad range of essays on the relationships between sport, culture and the media. Featuring a mixture of classic works and recent texts, the Reader provides students, lecturers and researchers with an essential core of readings on the topic.

The readings examine media and sport in Europe, North and South America, Australia, Asia and Africa and explore topics such as:

• Sport as entertainment: the role of mass communications
• The manufacture of sports news for the daily press
• The televised sports manhood formula
• Women, sport and globalization
• Sport on the information superhighway
• Advertising sportswear to black audiences
• Mega-events and media culture: sport and the Olympics