The Amer­i­can sports sta­di­um, in all its rau­cous glo­ry, is a shock­ing­ly over­looked cen­ter­piece of our nation­al cul­ture. In this game-chang­ing romp, intre­pid sports­writer Rafi Kohan fina­gles access to our most beloved fields to find out just what makes them tick: from old-timer Wrigley, creak­i­ly adjust­ing to the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, to the flashy new lights of Jerry’s World in Dal­las; from the uneasy return to enthu­si­asm at Penn State’s Beaver Sta­di­um to the roller-coast­er econ­o­my of LeBron’s Cleve­land. Inves­ti­gat­ing quirky logis­tics and deeply ingrained tra­di­tions that encour­age row­dy cus­toms— like scalper turf wars win­dow-shat­ter­ing fight­er-jet fly­overs and death-defy­ing half­time acts — Kohan debunks reduc­tive tru­isms to expose the often pun­ish­ing real­i­ties of build­ing and main­tain­ing these com­mer­cial cathe­drals of sports wor­ship. Rol­lick­ing and unfor­get­table The Are­na is a must-read for super­fans, shame­less, band­wag­oners, ath­letes, broad­cast­ers, umpires, groundskeep­ers, archi­tects, cul­ture junkies, tail­gaters, and any­one who’s ever eager­ly head­ed off to the ball­park to catch a game.