Open Wednesday through Sunday 10am to 5pm
We invite you to our upcoming author night featuring Michael Messner’s The High School on Saturday, April 12, 2025, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM. We are honored to have him read an excerpt from his book and sign copies for guests while they enjoy light refreshments.
This is a FREE ticketed event and tickets will not be available at the door, so register for your free ticket today!
Videos:
“The High School: Sports, Spirit, and Citizens, 1903-2024” (“John Steinbeck”)
The High School: Sports, Spirit, and Citizens, 1903-2024 (“Gender Equity”)
About the Book
In The High School, sociologist Michael A. Messner reads through 120 years of El Gabilan, the yearbook from his alma mater, Salinas High School. The Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck also graduated from Salinas High, where in 1919 he served as senior class president, played on two sports teams, was in the school play and yearbook staff. Treating the yearbooks as a historical archive, Messner makes surprising discoveries about the school he thought he knew so well. Tracing American life and culture from 1903 to 2024, Messner illuminates shifts in social practices at his high school that reflect broader changes in American culture across the twentieth century and stretching to the present. Enriched with 270 photos from yearbooks old and recent, The High School spotlights how the meanings and iconography of high school activities have changed dramatically over the decades, even as the “sports spirit complex”—involving athletes, cheerleaders, band members, and community boosters—has remained a central part of the high school experience. By exploring evolving sports cultures, socioeconomic conditions, racial demographics, and shifting gender relations, Messner offers a fresh perspective on both change and continuity in high school, a defining milieu of American teenage life.
About the Author
Born and raised in Salinas, California, Michael Messner graduated in 1970 from Salinas High School, as did his sisters Terry and Melinda. His father, Russ Messner, was the highly respected basketball coach at the school for a quarter of a century. Michael Messner is currently professor emeritus of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California. His research spans the topics of gender and sports, gender-based violence, and war and peace. Messner’s honors include the Pursuit of Justice Award from the California Women’s Law Center, for his work in support of girls’ and women’s sports. The High School is his twentieth book. He and his wife, sociologist Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, live in Santa Fe, NM.
