Duke University Professor Orin Starn casts his anthropological eye on two topics most academics wouldn't touch: celebrity scandal and golf.
By dissecting the social, economic and political strands of "Tigergate," Starn's book The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal gets at the heart of American culture in the 21st Century.
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“Orin Starn’s excellent examination of Tiger Woods offers deep insight, original thinking, and valuable new perspectives. This book tells us a lot about Tiger, but even more about ourselves.”—Jaime Diaz, senior writer, Golf Digest
“The next time someone asks me about anthropology’s value to contemporary cultural debates, I’ll just tell them to read Orin Starn’s The Passion of Tiger Woods, a funny, engaging, readable and unapologetically anthropological take on celebrity scandal, popular culture, and American sports. From playful musings on a potentially recessive ‘golf gene’ to critiques of (wildly popular!) speculative genetic theories about black athleticism, Starn takes us on an entertaining ride through the history of a sport, the rise of its current superstar, and the media maelstrom of racial and sexual imagery that followed from a relatively minor car crash in Florida one fateful Thanksgiving night. I’m one of those people who was tired of hearing about Tigergate almost as soon as the story broke, but Starn does a convincing job of showing me why I should have been listening and watching even more closely.”—John L. Jackson Jr., author of Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness
By dissecting the social, economic and political strands of "Tigergate," Starn's book The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal gets at the heart of American culture in the 21st Century.
***
“Orin Starn’s excellent examination of Tiger Woods offers deep insight, original thinking, and valuable new perspectives. This book tells us a lot about Tiger, but even more about ourselves.”—Jaime Diaz, senior writer, Golf Digest
“The next time someone asks me about anthropology’s value to contemporary cultural debates, I’ll just tell them to read Orin Starn’s The Passion of Tiger Woods, a funny, engaging, readable and unapologetically anthropological take on celebrity scandal, popular culture, and American sports. From playful musings on a potentially recessive ‘golf gene’ to critiques of (wildly popular!) speculative genetic theories about black athleticism, Starn takes us on an entertaining ride through the history of a sport, the rise of its current superstar, and the media maelstrom of racial and sexual imagery that followed from a relatively minor car crash in Florida one fateful Thanksgiving night. I’m one of those people who was tired of hearing about Tigergate almost as soon as the story broke, but Starn does a convincing job of showing me why I should have been listening and watching even more closely.”—John L. Jackson Jr., author of Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness
