About the Author: About our authors

Stanley Eitzen (1934 to 2017) was professor emeritus in sociology at Colorado State University, where he taught for 21 years and received the John N. Stern Distinguished Professor award. Known as Stan to his friends, he was an avid fan of all sports and played football, basketball and track in college. Prior to receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas, he coached high school football, basketball and track, and taught social studies. After going back to school and receiving an M.S. in social science, a second Master's and a Ph.D. in sociology, he began a prolific career, publishing numerous articles and textbooks for more than 40 years such as Social Problems; Diversity in Families; Globalization: The Transformation of Social Worlds; Solutions to Social Problems: Lessons from Other Societies; Sociology of North American Sport; and Fair and Foul: Rethinking the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport. In addition to teaching and writing, Stan served as editor of the Social Science Journal, the Journal of the Western Social Science Association and as President of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. In retirement, Stan took up the hobbies of wood carving, painting (his art is on the cover of this book), the occasional golf game and of course watching all manner of sports.

Kelly Eitzen Smith received her Ph.D. From the University of Arizona in 1999. She is currently an applied sociologist and Assessment Coordinator for the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, and a Research Associate for the Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office at the University of Arizona. Prior to these positions, she taught in the University of Arizona's sociology department and was the Associate Director of the Center for Applied Sociology. She is co-author of Social Problems (15th Edition, with D. Stanley Eitzen and Maxine Baca Zinn), and Experiencing Poverty: Voices from the Bottom (2nd Edition, with D. Stanley Eitzen). She currently assists the school with all aspects of accreditation including data collection, surveys, annual reports, program assessment and self-study reports. She also conducts research and provides assistance at the Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office at the university. Her current research interests include housing and transportation affordability, poverty, urban social problems, tribal communities, community and neighborhood planning, and transit-oriented development.

Maxine Baca Zinn is professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Oregon. Her books include Women of Color in U.S. Society (with Bonnie Thornton Dill), and Gender Through the Prism of Difference (with Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Michael Messner). She is the coauthor (with D. Stanley Eitzen) of several sociology textbooks including Diversity in Families and Social Problems, both of which won McGuffey awards for excellence over multiple editions from the text and academic authors association, and Globalization: The Transformation of Social Worlds. She served as President of the Western Social Science Association. In 2000 she received the American Sociological Association's Jessie Bernard Award, sociology's highest award for work on gender. She received the Charles Horton Cooley Award for distinguished scholarship from the Michigan Sociological Association in 2013, and the distinguished career award from the Latino section of the American Sociological Association in 2015.