Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport
‘Artistic Impressions is an important book and a long-overdue contribution to the history of figure skating.’(Paul J. DeLoca)'It was the movement to music that first drew me to figure skating, and it is still that aspect which fascinates me today. But like all young male figure skaters, I had to endure the social taboo of participating in the sport. I enjoyed reading Mary Louise Adams' remarkable book about the history of our sport. I was intrigued by how gender differences affected the direction of figure skating from the time of Sonia Henie to the present.' (Louis Stong, Skate Canada Hall of Famer and consultant; coach of World Champions Barbara Underhill, Paul Martini, and Kurt Browning)‘This book offers an excellent history of the sport with respect to gender… Artistic Impressions should be a required reading for anyone involved in the marketing and development of figure skating.’ (Melanie Hoyt)‘It  is full of fascinating detail….I learned a great deal and was impressed at how  engagingly Adams explained some of the specificities of the transition from a  set of sporting activities being embedded in masculinity to one so strongly  inflected with femininity… Adams succeeds in putting figure skating onto the  agenda of the history of sport.’ (Kath  Woodword)‘Mary  Louise Adams offers a thoughtful and complex discussion about sport, gender,  and sexuality. …Artistic  Impressions is an excellent fusion of historical research and sociological  analysis.’ (Douglas A Brown)