Search results: “sports”
Showing all 14 results
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A People’s History of Sports in the United States
$18.95 – $26.95From author and sportswriter Zirin comes a rollicking, rebellious, myth-busting history of sports in America that puts politics in the ring with pop culture.
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Bad Sports
How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love$17.95Funny, engaging, and sharply pointed in his appraisal of the sports complex bankrupting our cities, the celebrated author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States returns with a hard-hitting indictment of big business and the corrupt practices that are ruining the sports we love.
When attending a baseball game becomes a luxury reserved for the wealthy few and cities build multi-million dollar stadiums while letting their bridges crumble, the price of sports in this country demands reassessment. Bad Sports cuts through the hype and bombast to give us a portrait of sports ownership as irresponsible as the financial shenanigans that drove the nation to the edge of economic ruin. From the outrageous use of public funds for stadium construction to the use of these spaces for religious and political platforms, Dave Zirin raises vital questions about misplaced priorities and moral abdications among the politicians we elect and the owners of the teams we root for.
Speaking out in clear and passionate terms for the rights of any taxpayer and sports fan, Zirin returns America’s favorite pastimes back to where they belong—in the open and for the people. -
Game Over
How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down$18.95 – $18.99“Enlightening” essays on athletes, activism, and the important role sports plays in our society (Publishers Weekly).
Sportscaster Howard Cosell dubbed it “rule number one of the jockocracy”: sports and politics just don’t mix. But in truth, some of our most important debates about class, race, religion, sex, and the raw quest for political power are played out both on and off the field. From the NFL lockout and the role of soccer in the Arab Spring to the Penn State sexual abuse scandals and Tim Tebow’s on-field genuflections, this timely and hard-hitting new book from the “conscience of American sports writing” offers new insights and analysis of headline-grabbing sports controversies (The Washington Post).
It explores the shady side of the NCAA; the explosive 2011 MLB All-Star Game; and why the Dodgers crashed and burned. It covers the fascinating struggles of gay and lesbian athletes to gain acceptance, female athletes to be more than sex symbols, and athletes everywhere to assert their collective bargaining rights as union members. Dave Zirin also illustrates the ways that athletes are once again using their exalted platforms to speak out and reclaim sports from the corporate interests that have taken it hostage. In Game Over, he cheers the victories—but also reflects on how far we have yet to go.
“A book that no thinking sports fan can afford to miss.” —Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning -
Tropic of Football
The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL$26.99Longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award
“Everything that’s rousing and distressing about block-and-tackle football is encompassed in Tropic of Football. . . illuminating.”
—Newsday
How a tiny Pacific archipelago is producing more players—from Troy Polamalu to Marcus Mariota—for the NFL than anywhere else in the world, by an award-winning sports historianFootball is at a crossroads, its future imperiled by the very physicality that drives its popularity. Its grass roots—high school and youth travel program—are withering. But players from the small South Pacific American territory of Samoa are bucking that trend, quietly becoming the most disproportionately overrepresented culture in the sport.
Jesse Sapolu, Junior Seau, Troy Polamalu, and Marcus Mariota are among the star players to emerge from the Samoan islands, and more of their brethren suit up every season. The very thing that makes them so good at football—their extraordinary internalization of discipline and warrior self-image—makes them especially vulnerable to its pitfalls, including concussions and brain injuries.
Award-winning sports historian Rob Ruck travels to the South Seas to unravel American Samoa’s complex ties with the United States. He finds an island blighted by obesity, where boys train on fields blistered with volcanic pebbles wearing helmets that should have been discarded long ago, incurring far more neurological damage than their stateside counterparts and haunted by Junior Seau, who committed suicide after a vaunted twenty-year NFL career, unable to live with the demons that resulted from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Tropic of Football is a gripping, bittersweet history of what may be football’s last frontier.
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We Own the Future
Democratic Socialism—American Style$17.99A stunningly original and timely collection that makes the case for “socialism, American style”
It’s a strange day when a New York Times conservative columnist is forced to admit that the left is winning, but as David Brooks wrote recently, “the American left is on the cusp of a great victory.” Among Americans under thirty, 43 percent had a favorable view of socialism, while only 32 percent had a favorable view of capitalism. Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans questioned the fundamental tenets of capitalism and expressed openness to a socialist alternative.
We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism—American Style offers a road map to making this alternative a reality, giving readers a practical vision of a future that is more democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable. The book includes a crash course in the history and practice of democratic socialism, a vivid picture of what democratic socialism in America might look like in practice, and compelling proposals for how to get there from the age of Trump and beyond.
With contributions from some of the nation’s leading political activists and analysts, We Own the Future articulates a clear and uncompromising view from the left—a perfectly timed book that will appeal to a wide audience hungry for change.
Table of Contents
Part I: Is a New America Possible?
Introduction
Kate Aronoff, Peter Dreier, and Michael KazinHow Socialists Changed America
Peter Dreier and Michael KazinToward a Third Reconstruction
Andrea Flynn, Susan Holmberg, Dorian Warren, and Felicia WongA Three-Legged Stool for Racial and Economic Justice
Darrick HamiltonDemocratic Socialism for a Climate-Changed Century
Naomi KleinPart II: Expanding Democracy
Governing Socialism
Bill Fletcher Jr.We the People: Voting Rights, Campaign Finance, and Election Reform
J. Mijin ChaConfronting Corporate Power
Robert KuttnerBuilding the People’s Banks
David DayenDemocracy, Equality, and the Future of Workers
Sarita Gupta, Stephen Lerner, and Joseph A. McCartinWho Gets to Be Safe? Prisons, Police, and Terror
Aviva StahlOn Immigration: A Socialist Case for Open Borders
Michelle ChenOn Foreign Policy: War from Above, Solidarity from Below
Tejasvi NagarajaPart III: The Right to a Good Life
Livable Cities
Thomas J. SugrueWhat Does Health Equity Require? Racism and the Limits of Medicare for All
Dorothy RobertsThe Family of the Future
Sarah LeonardDefending and Improving Public Education
Pedro NogueraReclaiming Competition: Sports and Socialism
David ZirinWhat About a Well-Fed Artist? Imagining Cultural Work in a Democratic Socialist Society
Francesca FiorentiniHow Socialism Surged, and How It Can Go Further
Harold MeyersonAfterword: A Day in the Life of a Socialist Citizen
Michael Walzer -
City of Champions
A History of Triumph and Defeat in Detroit$29.99The changing fortunes of Detroit, told through the lens of the city’s major sporting events, by the bestselling author of Soccernomics, and a prizewinning cultural critic
From Ty Cobb and Hank Greenberg to the Bad Boys, from Joe Louis and Gordie Howe to the Malice at the Palace, City of Champions explores the history of Detroit through the stories of its most gifted athletes and most celebrated teams, linking iconic events in the history of Motown sports to the city’s shifting fortunes.
In an era when many teams have left rustbelt cities to relocate elsewhere, Detroit has held on to its franchises, and there is currently great hope in the revival of the city focused on its downtown sports complexes—but to whose benefit? Szymanski and Weineck show how the fate of the teams in Detroit’s stadiums, gyms, and fields is echoed in the rise and fall of the car industry, political upheavals ushered in by the depression, World War II, the 1967 uprising, and its recent bankruptcy and renewal.
Driven by the conviction that sports not only mirror society but also have a special power to create both community and enduring narratives that help define a city’s sense of self, City of Champions is a unique history of the most American of cities.
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The Kaepernick Effect
Taking a Knee, Changing the World$17.99 – $25.99Riveting and inspiring first-person stories of how “taking a knee” triggered an awakening in sports, from the celebrated sportswriter
“The Kaepernick Effect reveals that Colin Kaepernick’s story is bigger than one athlete. With profiles of courage that leap off the page, Zirin uncovers a whole national movement of citizen-athletes fighting for racial justice.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist
In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem. By “taking a knee,” Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick’s simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America’s persistent racial inequality.
Critically acclaimed sports journalist and author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Dave Zirin chronicles “the Kaepernick effect” for the first time, through interviews with a broad cross-section of professional athletes across many different sports, college stars and high-powered athletic directors, and high school athletes and coaches. In each case, he uncovers the fascinating explanations and motivations behind a mass political movement in sports, through deeply personal and inspiring accounts of risk-taking, activism, and courage both on and off the field.
A book about the politics of sport, and the impact of sports on politics, The Kaepernick Effect is for anyone seeking to understand an essential dimension of the new movement for racial justice in America.
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37 Words
Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination$29.99 – $42.00A sweeping history of the federal legislation that prohibits sex discrimination in education, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
—Title IX’s first thirty-seven wordsBy prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, the 1972 legislation popularly known as Title IX profoundly changed the lives of women and girls in the United States, accelerating a movement for equal education in classrooms, on sports fields, and in all of campus life.
37 Words is the story of Title IX. Filled with rich characters—from Bernice Resnick Sandler, an early organizer for the law, to her trans grandchild—the story of Title IX is a legislative and legal drama with conflicts over regulations and challenges to the law. It’s also a human story about women denied opportunities, students struggling for an education free from sexual harassment, and activists defying sexist discrimination. These intersecting narratives of women seeking an education, playing sports, and wanting protection from sexual harassment and assault map gains and setbacks for feminism in the last fifty years and show how some women benefit more than others. Award-winning journalist Sherry Boschert beautifully explores the gripping history of Title IX through the gutsy people behind it.
In the tradition of the acclaimed documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, 37 Words offers a crucial playbook for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and who is horrified by current attacks on women’s rights.
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And the Dragons Do Come
Raising a Transgender Kid in Rural America$24.99A gripping account of one family’s battle to protect their daughter against transphobia and hate in contemporary America
Our country stands at a critical cultural crossroads, with a wave of anti-trans legislation emerging at unprecedented levels targeting trans children, in particular, who face increasing stigmatization and erasure. Sim Butler’s And the Dragons Do Come is a poignant account of one family’s experience of parenting and supporting a trans child against this nightmarish backdrop.
In recent years, the Butler family faced an impossible reality in their home state of Alabama, where trans rights are increasingly under attack. Butler recounts their family’s struggles and sacrifices to protect their trans child against the barrage of state-sanctioned intolerance in the legal, educational, and health arenas.
Around the time she turned twelve, his daughter’s personal struggles became political fodder. Along with other trans kids, she was outlawed from playing sports and forbidden to use the girls’ bathroom. Another law made Butler and his wife felons for seeking trans-affirming health care for her. When her charter school was featured in several gubernatorial campaign ads, local community members began driving through the parking lot to yell at the trans kids.
Serving both as a compassionate story of one family’s struggle for acceptance and as a window onto a fraught issue that parents, grandparents, other family members, and friends are confronting across the nation, And the Dragons Do Come provides a firsthand perspective on the human cost of anti-trans sentiment.
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Fair Game
Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports$29.99A timely, illuminating plan for how trans and cis athletes can both fairly play sports
Forward by Chris MosierFair Game offers an insightful, timely examination of the ongoing battle for equality in athletics. As LGBTQ athletes break barriers in the Olympics, transgender athletes still face harsh restrictions in many areas. With twenty-four states passing anti-trans sports legislation in the last two years, nearly half of Americans live under laws that restrict or ban transgender individuals from participating in sports. Fair Game explores why taking the next step and increasing the acceptance of trans athletes is important not only for everyone with an Olympic dream but also everyone whose kids just want to join the town soccer league.
Fair Game explores the role of sports in the lives of transgender youth and adults, offering a comprehensive, nuanced, and multivoiced picture of the transgender athletic experience. Through a woven collection of the narratives from a marginalized population, Fair Game examines the patterns of fear and gender stereotypes that undergird anti-trans legislation and offers helpful historical and political context about sex segregation in sports and how bodies (including trans bodies) work in sports.
Timely, accessible, inspiring, and rigorous, Fair Game presents a sports landscape beyond our current conceptions, a world changed by unrestricted and joyful movement in sports.
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Fifty Years of Title IX
How 37 Words Changed America$25.99A “valuable, well-researched and nuanced history” (Booklist) of the groundbreaking law that transformed education, athletics, and gender equity in the United States—and the battles still being fought today
In 1972, thirty-seven words quietly entered federal law and ignited a revolution:
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Title IX redefined what was possible for women and girls in America’s schools—from access to classrooms and sports fields to protection from sexual harassment and assault. In Fifty Years of Title IX, a book The Washington Monthly calls “an impressive feat,” award-winning journalist Sherry Boschert traces the dramatic story of how this pivotal law came to be, how it has evolved, and why it remains a powerful—and contested—force in the struggle for gender justice.
Through meticulous reporting, Boschert introduces readers to the trailblazers behind the law, including Bernice Resnick Sandler, and the generations who have demanded that its promises be fulfilled. Called “inspiring” by Publishers Weekly, Fifty Years of Title IX “puts a human face” (Library Journal) on the fight for gender equity.
As Lucy Jane Bledsoe, author of No Stopping Us Now, writes, Boschert has published “a road map for what it will take to go forward. It is a really important book.”
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Bounce
Six Balls, Six Sports, and the History of Globalization$29.99An entertaining and original introduction to the debate over globalization through the history of six well-known pieces of sports equipment
Globalization is the central economic issue of our time. It is tied to everything we buy; it impacts who wins elections, and it can lead to the wholesale collapse (or revitalization) of towns, cities, and countries. And yet, for all its significance, globalization is still widely misunderstood—or just not understood at all. What’s been missing is a way in.
In Bounce, William Milberg, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, takes the game balls used in six popular sports—golf, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, and basketball—and goes deep into their complex and fascinating history, which is also the history of globalization. Each ball tells us unique and vital things about this evolution: the golf ball, for instance, uncovers the dynamics of the first wave of globalization, with colonial powers seeking rubber in the plantations of Africa, Asia, and South America, and the importance of machine technology and innovation. The football, on the other hand, shows how labor unions provided the “countervailing power” that workers needed against growing industrial corporations, prompting steady growth in pay and economic security for the average worker.
Globalization has been a series of choices, in other words—by individuals, corporations, and governments. In the vein of Simon Kuper’s Soccernomics and Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World, Bounce shows us how the history of these game balls helps us to understand the consequences of those choices and where we want the economy to go.
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Black Stats
African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-first Century$14.95 – $49.00An essential handbook of eye-opening—and frequently myth-busting—facts and figures about the real lives of Black Americans today
There’s no defeating white supremacist myths without data—real data. Black Stats is a compact and useful guide that offers up-to-date figures on Black life in the United States today, avoiding jargon and assumptions and providing critical analyses and information.
Monique Couvson, author of the acclaimed Pushout, has compiled statistics from a broad spectrum of telling categories that illustrate the quality of life and the possibility of (and barriers to) advancement for a group at the heart of American society. With fascinating information on everything from disease trends, incarceration rates, and lending practices to voting habits, green jobs, and educational achievement, the material in this book will enrich and inform a range of public debates while challenging commonly held yet often misguided perceptions.
Black Stats simultaneously highlights measures of incredible progress, conveys the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, and surprises with revelations that span subjects including the entertainment industry, military service, and marriage trends. An essential tool for advocates, educators, and anyone seeking racial justice, Black Stats is an affordable guidebook for anyone seeking to understand the complex state of our nation.
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The Unfinished Business of 1776
Why the American Revolution Never Ended$29.99A clarion call for taking back the American Revolution from the far right, published for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
Who gets to claim the legacy of the American Revolution and the mantle of patriotism that goes along with it? In a sharp, irreverent, deeply informed account of the nation’s founding moment and its enduring legacies, historian Thomas Richards Jr. invites us to see the Revolution not just as a one-time fight for political freedom from Britain but as an ongoing struggle for equality, justice, and social and political independence for all Americans.
A riveting work of narrative history, The Unfinished Business of 1776 shows that the Revolutionary struggle did not end in 1787 when the Constitution was ratified: Across nine dramatic chapters, Richards introduces readers to the vividly drawn characters who kept the Revolution alive for the next century and beyond, including the women’s rights advocate Judith Sargent Murray, the enslaved rebel Gabriel, the economic reformer Solomon Sharp, and the religious visionary Joseph Smith—each pushing for freedoms that extended well beyond the traditional narrative of the Revolution, and each revealing how the unfinished work of 1776 fueled demands for economic, social, and legal equality that lasted well beyond the Revolution itself.
A myth-busting book about the history we think we know, The Unfinished Business of 1776 is the perfect antidote to jingoistic celebrations of America—offering an inclusive vision of our common past.
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