San Antonio College Library

"Leisure practices in the modern Western world exist in the context of mass education, mass communication and mass tourism. In this clear and energetic text, Chris Rojek advocates the theorizing of leisure (taking into account the relationship between individuals, leisure behavior and citizenship) and outlines an approach to the analysis of leisure activity which seeks to consolidate motivation, location and context. Definitions of key concepts and...

" ... Offers a clear, compact primer in social theory for students needing to engage with the application of sociological perspectives to the study of sport and leisure ... each chapter focuses on the work of a major social theorist and their most influential ideas, provides helpful historical and biographical detail to set the person and their thinking in contemporary context, identifies questions in sport and leisure on which the theory can shed...

"A philosophical musing on sports and play, this wholly inspiring and utterly charming reissue of Bart Giamatti's long-out-of-print final book, Take Time for Paradise, puts baseball in the context of American life and leisure. Giamatti begins with the conviction that our use of free time tells us something about who we are. He explores the concepts of leisure, American-style. And in baseball, the quintessential American game, he finds its ultimate...

"Between 1850 and 1945, the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry." "Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre...

"Throughout the twentieth century, African Americans challenged segregation at amusement parks, swimming pools, and skating rinks not only in pursuit of pleasure but as part of a wider struggle for racial equality. Well before the Montgomery bus boycott, mothers led their children into segregated amusement parks, teenagers congregated at forbidden swimming pools, and church groups picnicked at white-only parks. But too often white mobs attacked those...