In the increasingly popular sport of parkour, athletes run, jump, climb, flip, and vault through city streetscapes. In Parkour and the City, Jeffrey L. Kidder examines the ways in which this internet-friendly twenty-first-century sport involves a creative appropriation of urban spaces as well as a method of everyday risk-taking by a youth culture that valorizes individuals who successfully manage danger.  
 

An accomplished triathlete and social scientist, Diana Tracy Cohen offers much insight into the effects of endurance-sport training on family, parenting, and the sense of self.  Based in part on in-depth interviews with forty-seven triathletes and three prominent men in the race industry, Iron Dads explores the sacrifices that are required—both at home and at work—to cross an iron-distance finish line.    

Is sport good for kids? Child’s Play presents a nuanced examination of this question, considering not only the physical impacts of youth athletics, but its psychological and social ramifications as well. The eleven original scholarly essays in this collection provide a probing look into how sports—in community athletic leagues, in schools, and even on television—play a major role in how young people view themselves, shape their identities, and imagine their place in society.

Focusing largely on triathlon and “extreme” mountain biking, sociologist Stephen C. Poulson offers a fascinating exploration of the new lifestyle sports, shedding light on why people find them so compelling. Drawing on interviews with competitors, on his own experience as a participant, and other materials, Poulson looks at the commodification of the new sports, the types of people who decide to participate, those most often excluded, and whether or not participation in lifestyle sport should always be considered “good” for athletes. 

Incidents of doping in sports are common in news headlines, despite regulatory efforts. How did doping become a crisis? What does a doping violation actually entail? Who gets punished for breaking the rules of fair play? In Testing for Athlete Citizenship, Kathryn E. Henne, a former competitive athlete and expert in the law and science of anti-doping regulations, examines the development of sports governance aimed at controlling performance enhancement in international sports.

 

Indian Spectacle explores the ways in which white, middle-class Americans have consumed narratives of masculinity, race, and collegiate athletics through the lens of Indian-themed athletic identities, mascots, and music. Drawing on a cross-section of American institutions of higher education, Guiliano investigates the role of sports mascots in the big business of twentieth-century American college football in order to connect mascotry to expressions of community identity, individual belonging, stereotyped imagery, and cultural hegemony.  

In Activism and the Olympics, Boykoff provides a critical overview of the Olympic industry and its political opponents in the modern era. After presenting a brief history of Olympic activism, he turns his attention to on-the-ground activism through the lens of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, drawing from personal interviews with activists, journalists, civil libertarians, and Olympic organizers.