Playing through Pain

“A thrillingly ambitious Marxist analysis of the contemporary sports landscape.”—Public Books

“Sailofsky’s work is an encyclopedic catalogue of all the real human costs we pay for the sports we love. His view on the underlying cause of these problems is different than what critical sports fans will find almost anywhere else, and he provides valuable food for thought on how to improve the games that play an important role in our society.”—Daniel Murphy, author of Start By Believing

“Daniel Sailofsky’s Playing through Pain packs a mighty wallop, giving us all a new way of understanding the physical and mental costs of sports. But it’s not just about athletes who push their bodies and minds to the limits. It’s about the ways that sports, in a society that puts profits before people, savages and damages our lives and communities. There will be a mass reclamation of sports at some point. When it happens, I'm convinced that its leadership will have this book in their hands.”—Dave Zirin, Sports Editor of The Nation

“A detailed examination of the problems in sport caused by capitalism. Sailofsky takes the violence of capitalism as a central point around which to build his argument and continuously argues for a different form of sport in a socialist future. An important contribution to a field that seldom uses Marxist analysis, this is an approachable and engaging study, one that is perfect for scholars and students alike.”—Munene Mwaniki, Western Carolina University

“Sailofsky examines the intersections of capitalism, violence, and professional and elite sports, placing capitalism as the culprit in creating violence and injury on the field and contributing to off-the-field domestic and sexual violence. Broadly appealing to many disciplines, Playing through Pain is an engaging study of how capitalism sours sports.”—Billy Hawkins, University of Houston