Completely updated and revised, this text sets sports in a social-cultural historical context. The Fifth Edition of this highly-acclaimed text offers a reflective, analytical history of American sports from the colonial era to the present. With a focus on the historical relationship between sports, and gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion, and region, this text considers how sports transcend these fundamental categories, and how the experience of sports either as a player or as a fan can bind diverse groups together. This text also looks at how sports at various historical moments have reinforced or challenged the values and behaviors of society.