`It is not only about sport, but the contexts [and] cultures that encircle it. The authors[...] review every known theory, topic and problem relevant to the scholarly analysis of sport.... a champion without challengers' - Ellis Cashmore, Staffordshire University, and author of Making Sense of Sports

Now available in paperback, this vital handbook marks the development of sports studies as a major new discipline within the social sciences. Edited by the leading sociologist of sport, Eric Dunning, and Jay Coakley, author of the best selling textbook on sport in the USA, it both reflects and richly endorses this new found status.

Key aspects of the Handbook include: an inventory of the principal achievements in the field; a guide to the chief conflicts and difficulties in the theory and research process; a rallying point for researchers who are established or new to the field, which sets the agenda for future developments; a resource book for teachers who wish to establish new curricula and develop courses and programmes in the area of sports studies.

With an international and inter-disciplinary team of contributors the Handbook of Sports Studies is comprehensive in scope, relevant in content and far-reaching in its discussion of future prospect.