Women, African Americans, and gays have recently upended US culture with demands for inclusion and respect, while economic changes have transformed work and daily life for millions of Americans. The national obsession with the National Football League provides a window on this dynamic period of change, reshaping ideas about manliness to respond to new urgencies on and beyond the gridiron. Thomas P. Oates uses feminist theory to break down the dynamic cultural politics shaping, and shaped b...

Sports embodies and defines US culture while also shaping it and being shaped by it. Thomas P. Oates and Travis Vogan present essays focused on the intersections across sport, power, and resistance in the North American sports world.Topics range from Black coaches in the National Football League to disordered eating within distance running to transgender athletes’ fight to participate in sports. The editors have organized the contributions into three sections. Part one probes how s...

Throughout United States history, journalists and media workers have mobilized to promote and oppose various movements in public life. But a single meaning of the public remains elusive. Frank D. Durham and Thomas P. Oates provide an eye-opening analysis of the role played by journalism in the ongoing struggle to shape and transform ideas about the public. Using historical episodes and news reports, Durham and Oates offer examples of the influential words and images deployed by no...

From Publishers Weekly:"Standouts include Dennis Lehane's gilt-edged chiller, 'A Bostonian (in Cambridge),' in which a wealthy collector of letters of abandonment falls prey to wily blackmailers, and Joe R. Lansdale's 'The Skull Collector,' a gangster yarn featuring gun-toting female grave robbers. Overshadowing everything, though, is Lee Goldberg's 'Lost Shows,' a delightful shocker about a fanatical collector of short-lived and unaired TV shows who has t...

A must-listen collection of fifteen bibliomysteries by bestselling and award-winning authorsBibliomysteries Volume 2 includes:● "Remaindered" by Peter Lovesey● "The Compendium of Srem" by F. Paul Wilson● "The Sequel" by R. L. Stine● "Mystery, Inc." by Joyce Carol Oates● and many others

Foreword by Richard Hytner, Deputy Chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi WorldwideWe’ve all worked with one-a smart and immensely talented individual who brings enormous value to the organization. The problem? He’s an awful teammate.So as a leader, do you consider this key player toxic or irreplaceable?There Is an I in Team explores the relationship between individual and team-asking the question, How can we harness the talent of individual performer...

Nothing exposed the class and generational divide in black America more starkly than Bill Cosby's now-infamous assault on the black poor when he received an NAACP award in the spring of 2004. The comedian-cum-social critic lamented the lack of parenting, poor academic performance, sexual promiscuity, and criminal behavior among what he called the "knuckleheads" of the African-American community. Even more surprising than his comments, however, was the fact that his audience laughed and app...

Previously published as part of Higher Education?In this provocative work, the renowned sociologist Andrew Hacker and New York Times writer Claudia Dreifus make an incisive case that American college athletics—which originally came into the campus as an innocent form of recreation—have overtaken academic pursuits, compromised the moral authority of educators, and gobbled up resources that should have gone to their basic missions. In other words, t...

Baseball and Philosophy brings together two high-powered pastimes: the sport of baseball and the academic discipline of philosophy. Eric Bronson asked eighteen young professors to provide their profound analysis of some aspect of baseball. The result offers surprisingly deep insights into this most American of games.The contributors include many of the leading voices in the burgeoning new field of philosophy of sport, plus a few other talented philosophers with a personal interest i...

"Vince Lombardi—who relished his undergraduate studies in philosophy—would have loved this book." — BooklistFootball and Philosophy: Going Deep investigates many of the issues surrounding the nation's biggest sport. From a review of the flaws of the Bowl Championship Series, to a study of the violence inherent in the game, to an examination of Vince Lombardi's views on winning, to the problems created by the development of instant replay, the essa...

Thousands of children participate in community sports every year, enjoying recreation time with their peers, getting healthy exercise, and learning a variety of personal and group skills. At the same time, children's sports are not without controversy: parents can be overly invested in their children's exploits, competitive success is often the focus, and rising costs can limit participation. Consider, too, that these activities, billed as being for the kids, are often overlaid with other ...

In the late 1980s, gangsta rap music emerged in urban America, giving voice to—and making money for—a social group widely considered to be in crisis: young, poor, black men. From its local origins, gangsta rap went on to flood the mainstream, generating enormous popularity and profits. Yet the highly charged lyrics, public battles, and hard, fast lifestyles that characterize the genre have incited the anger of many public figures and proponents of "family values." Constantly engaging quest...