What comes to mind when we think of stadiums in the United States of America. For most of us its entertainment, football games, Taylor Swift concerts, monster truck rallies, and rodeos. But as historian Frank Andre Guridy reveals in his book “The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play,” over the past 150 years they have been where people gather to wrestle over defining the soul of America.
From the wooden ballparks of the 19th century to today’ glass and steel mega stadiums. These buildings have been the public’s square where Americans push and pull over issues of race, class, gender, and sexual inequalities. In the new book “The Stadium” Guridy writes of its remarkable role as a space of protest and politics, not just play, and tells the dramatic people’s history of American life.
Frank Andre Guridy is an award-winning historian and the author of three books. He is a professor of history and African American studies and the Executive Director of the Eric Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University.
