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Beer, Babes and Balls: Masculinity and Sports Talk Radio
David Nylund, Professor of Social Work
(State University of New York Press, 2007, $19.95)
The “good old boy”
network may have a new
home—in sports talk radio,
according to David Nylund.
In his book, Nylund, who
is also clinical director of
the Sacramento Gay and
Lesbian Center Counseling
Program, examines the
growing phenomenon of
sports talk radio and how
it encourages its predominately
male audience to bring out their
inner “macho man.”
“In sports talk radio there are a lot of
homophobic, exclusionary practices, and
most of them are related to the narrow
way we construct the ideas of masculinity
and male bonding,” Nylund says. “There’s
no ‘sissy’ stuff allowed.”
“I grew up in a working-class Detroit
neighborhood,” he says. “I was told early
on—by my grandma—that I needed to
know about sports in order to survive the
streets. She gave me a sports section, and
I began memorizing all the statistics. She
was right. If I got in trouble all I had to do
was spout out something about sports.”
Nylund, who says he wakes up every
morning to sports talk radio, interviewed
dozens of on-air talent, production staff
members, listeners and women who work
at sports bars for his book.
“There’s a lot of male posturing associated
with the sports talk world,” he says.
“Women can occasionally enter if they can
speak knowledgeably on the subject or
are willing to expose their bodies or act in
a hypersexual way.”
But, he says, there are positive aspects
of sports talk as well. “Sports provide a safe
channel for men to express feelings. It is
very intimate for two men to sit around
and talk about the 1968 Detroit Tigers.”
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The Arrow and the Olive Branch: Practical Idealism in U.S. Foreign Policy
Jack Godwin, Chief International Officer and Director of the Office of Global Education
(Praeger Security International, 2007, $49.95)
“On the Presidential
Coat of Arms, the
American eagle holds in
his right talon the olive
branch, while in his left he
holds a bundle of arrows,”
President John F. Kennedy
said in 1961. “We intend
to give equal attention to
both.”“That symbolizes my book,” says Jack Godwin. “The olive branch symbolizes American ideals such as freedom of speech, democracy and human rights. The arrows remind us we live in a bad neighborhood and sometimes have to resort to force.”
Godwin describes his book as “a cross between The Federalist Papers, which explains how the Constitution should work, and The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli’s 16th century treatise on statecraft.” Godwin’s research highlights many of the international challenges the U.S. faces today. The book begins with the Sept. 11 attacks then goes back in time to George Washington’s farewell address in 1796, when he warned his compatriots of the dangers of foreign entanglements. “The story goes forward from there,” Godwin says, “as later presidents upheld, redefined or ignored the foreign policy precedents set by their predecessors.”
As Leon Panetta writes in the foreword, “We should be mindful of the full range of foreign policy options available to us, skeptical of false historical analogies and vigilant in defense of America’s credibility, values and interests.”
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The GravediggerPeter Grandbois, Professor of English
(Chronicle Books, 2006, $13.95)
Inspiration comes from many sources, and for Peter Grandbois, the inspiration to write a novel came from an old Spanish folk tune about a man who digs graves.
“The song is about a gravedigger in a small village who has to bury his daughter. The song stuck in my mind for years and I wanted to understand the story behind it,” Grandbois says.
He began turning the concept of the story into a novel as part of his master’s thesis.
“It struck me that a way to get into the story was to have my gravedigger hear stories from the ghosts of the people he had buried. His job was to pass those stories on to the villagers and try to get at the truths of their lives,” he says.
The twist in the story comes when his daughter dies. Through her ghost, the gravedigger finds out he didn’t know all he thought he knew about her, that he was not as perfect a father as he imagined and that he may have been partly to blame for her death. Towards the end of the book he dies, and his story is then told.
“It’s a story about how joy and grief exist side by side,” Grandbois says. “Even though there are some complex themes, it’s the type of story where you want to keep turning the pages.
“For most writers, their first attempt at writing a book ends up in a drawer,” Grandbois said. “I knew The Gravedigger wasn’t perfect or the great American novel, but I was proud of it, and it has become a critical and commercial success.”
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