cover image Men Will Be Boys

Men Will Be Boys

Sally Jenkins. Doubleday Books, $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-385-48218-9

Dedicated to both her father, who ""Frankensteined"" her, and her long-suffering mother, this is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes soapboxy handbook on women and football, women and other sports, and women and men by a former staff writer for Sports Illustrated. After uproarious chapters on women as gridiron experts who have a different take on the game, the book climaxes in a chapter sure to appear in humor anthologies, a transcript of the first all-female broadcast of a Monday Night Football game in 2006, followed by a transcript of the first nationally televised NFL Women's League football game in 2022. There is an ironic chapter on the comforting clarity in the narrative of a football game: the game has a beginning, a middle and an end, plus a final score. But when Jenkins discusses female sportswriters and especially female sportscasters, she seems to forget that she is writing a book of humor and becomes preachy (on women in lockerrooms: ""women do not eroticize the workplace. But try explaining that to the sports-minded man""). (Oct.)