What do 120 years of high school yearbooks reveal about how sports shapes citizens?
“The High School [is] a brilliant work that may have many of us digging out our own yearbooks and revisiting our own stories.”
— C.J. Pascoe, author of Nice is not enough: Inequality and the limits of kindness at American High
“The High School has an important place in every sport sociologist’s library, but it also stimulates all of us to look back at our high school years with new eyes…a magnificent analysis.”
— Patricia Vertinsky, author of The female tradition in physical education: Women first reconsidered
“Michael Messner has written a powerful, compelling analysis…a superb study of gender, power, race, and class in Salinas, California.”
— Carol Lynn McKibben, author of Salinas: A history of race and resilience in an agricultural city.
“Compelling…meticulously researched…a lively narrative about one of the most important institutions of adolescent life.”
— Susan Cahn, author of Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sport.
A history of changing attitudes towards sports in American high schools—drawn from over a century’s worth of old and recent yearbooks
Meet the author, Michael Messner
Learn more about the author, Michael A. Messner, and why he wrote The High School.