"Bingo! Varda Burstyn has done it. This extraordinary book is a first. With great intelligence and insight it underlines the central role sport plays in the 'making of men' in modern Western culture. It should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in the pervasive influence of sport today. What she writes is true: major spectator sport creates and reinforces the cultural matrix that underpins our capitalist political economy. If you want to discover how it all came about, read this book."
David Meggyesy, Western Director, National Football League Players Association (NFLPA).

"The Rites of Men is most timely. ...Burstyn...has been one of the most eloquent social critics of sports in North America for decades. ...[S]he's deadly accurate."
The Globe and Mail, July 17, 1999.

Top of the Editor's Choice list.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto), July 24, 1999.

"This is a must-read, with profound insights into the fascination and power of sports in modern societies. Men and women who love sports may be uncomfortable with what Burstyn reveals, but if we are to realize the liberating potential of sports, we must address her critique."
Bruce Kidd, Ph.D., Dean, Faculty of Physical Education and Health, University of Toronto.

"Superb! Burstyn combines an historical analysis of the role of sport in the making of white masculinity with a comparison of sexuality, gender, and homoeroticism. The Rites of Men is one of the very best books on sports and masculinity."
Michael Kimmel, Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, and author of Manhood in America.

"This is a stunning book. 
I can think of few other works that successfully take on as 
many themes in contemporary political and cultural theory"

Karen Dubinsky, Dept. of History, Queen's University

"The Rites of Men by Varda Burstyn: a devastating feminist critique of contemporary sport."
The Independent's 'BOOKS OF THE YEAR,' 20 November 1999

"The Rites of Men challenges the status quo at every turn. It may outrage some readers, but open others' eyes....[Burstyn] may well be a revolutionary. ...[F]illed with copious anecdotes and references, carefully catalogued. ...The book will quickly, we predict, wind up in libraries and on university reading lists."
The Toronto Star, August 28, 1999.
(For the complete article, please click here)

"Brace yourself! This book will outrage sport. In an articulate examination that includes the entire game - sex, drugs, fatherhood, violence, marketing, and profit - Varda Burstyn gives voice to what many of us have felt at a gut level for years. That voice is bold and exactly on the mark. Bravo!"
Betty Baxter, former captain and coach of Canada's Olympic Volleyball Team
and founding member of the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport.

"This is a book that should be on course lists in all university faculties of physical education, and should also be read by anyone else with an interest in how sporting practices and sporting ideologies affect our lives."
Professor David Whitson, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2001 (36.2).
(For the complete article, please click here)

"Ten years of research into the workings of the sport nexus. ...Sport has become the great masculine secular religion of our era. ...Public subsidies for stadiums amount to a massive affirmative action program...for masculinism."

The Ottawa Citizen, August 13, 1999.