In 1975, New York Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte published SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, a critical examination of how the values of American sports had become corrupted and distorted by power brokers who pulled the purse strings. “SportsWorld” was an infrastructure first built in the late nineteenth century by industrialists, educators, politicians, promoters, journalists, and military leaders who believed in the potency of sports and American exceptionalism. For the faithful, SportsWorld represented a positive cultural force that unified the nation, strengthened vigorous manhood, and advanced the country's democratic ideals of equal opportunity and fair play. “In sports,” Lipsyte reflected, Americans believed “children will learn courage and self-control, old people will find blissful nostalgia, and families will discover new ways to communicate among themselves. Immigrants will find shortcuts to recognition as Americans. Rich and poor, black and white, educated and unskilled, we will all find a unifying language. The melting pot may be a myth, but we will all come together in the ballpark.”

Memorial Day 2023 was a significant moment in twenty-first-century U.S. military history. Although U.S. service members remained deployed around the world and Operation Inherent Resolve continues to target the Islamic State (in April 2023, the U.S. military and its partners executed thirty-five missions against ISIS in Iraq and Syria alone), this year's celebrations came six weeks after the U.S. Senate repealed the two-decade-old Authorization for the Use of Military Force that had made possible the 2003 invasion of Iraq.1 It was also only the second Memorial Day since U.S. troops left Afghanistan, abruptly and somewhat disastrously, in August 2021. As a result, the holiday was arguably the first in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be understood as having transitioned from “current events” to events whose legacies Americans were beginning to imagine and define.

Margot Canaday offers this new book as a kind of continuation of her classic 2009 study on the bureaucratic persecution of gays, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in the Twentieth Century. Rather than government documents, Queer Career draws on more than 150 oral histories of subjects recalling employment memories and complaints, as well as her signature exhaustion of the secondary sources.

With its annual World Happiness Report, Gallup has been ranking the feelings of different nations since 2012 (Figure 1). In the latest contest, Finland edged out Denmark for happiest nation on earth. The United States placed nineteenth. South Sudan came in last. The results are based on surveys with queries such as the following: “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?” and “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?” Respondents also report whether they have made charitable donations, and whether they have smiled, laughed, or experienced feelings of enjoyment or happiness recently.