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By Bethany Moreton
"In the 'culture wars' narrative of the Republican ascendancy, this slippage represents the greatest con in recent history: while you rush to defend marriage or protect the unborn, please pay no attention to the financier behind the curtain."
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Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World
by David Maraniss
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Synopses & Reviews From the critically acclaimed and bestselling author David Maraniss, a groundbreaking book that weaves sports, politics, and history into a tour de force about the 1960 Rome Olympics, eighteen days of theater, suspense, victory, and defeat David Maraniss draws compelling portraits of the athletes competing in Rome, including some of the most honored in Olympic history: decathlete Rafer Johnson, sprinter Wilma Rudolph, Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, and Louisville boxer Cassius Clay, who at eighteen seized the world stage for the first time, four years before he became Muhammad Ali. Along with these unforgettable characters and dramatic contests, there was a deeper meaning to those late-summer days at the dawn of the sixties. Change was apparent everywhere. The world as we know it was coming into view. Rome saw the first doping scandal, the first commercially televised Summer Games, the first athlete paid for wearing a certain brand of shoes. Old-boy notions of Olympic amateurism were crumbling and could never be taken seriously again. In the heat of the cold war, the city teemed with spies and rumors of defections. Every move was judged for its propaganda value. East and West Germans competed as a unified team less than a year before the Berlin Wall.There was dispute over the two Chinas. An independence movement was sweeping sub-Saharan Africa, with fourteen nations in the process of being born. There was increasing pressure to provide equal rights for blacks and women as they emerged from generations of discrimination. Using the meticulous research and sweeping narrative style that have become his trademark, Maraniss reveals the rich palate of character, competition, and meaning that gave Rome 1960 its singular essence. Review: "Overshadowed by more flamboyant or tragic Olympics, the 1960 Rome games were a sociopolitical watershed, argues journalist Maraniss ( Clemente) in this colorful retrospective. The games showcased Cold War propaganda ploys as the Soviet Union surged past the U.S. in the medal tally. Steroids and amphetamines started seeping into Olympian bloodstreams. The code of genteel amateurism — one weight-lifter was forbidden to accept free cuts from a meat company — began crumbling in the face of lavish Communist athletic subsidies and under-the-table shoe endorsement deals. And civil rights and anticolonialism became conspicuous themes as charismatic black athletes — supercharged sprinter Wilma Rudolph, brash boxing phenom Cassius Clay, barefoot Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila — grabbed the limelight while the IOC sidestepped the apartheid issue. Still, we're talking about the Olympics, and Maraniss can't help wallowing in the classic tropes: personal rivalries, judging squabbles, come-from-behind victories and inspirational backstories of obstacles overcome (Rudolph wins the gold, having hurdled Jim Crow and childhood polio that left her in leg braces). As usual, these Olympic stories don't quite bear up under the mythic symbolism they're weighted with (with the exception perhaps of Abebe Bikila), but Maraniss provides an intelligent context for his evocative reportage. Photos. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: Seldom is a book as ill-served by its subtitle as is David Maraniss' "Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World." Maraniss resolutely illuminates every long-running story that enjoyed a chapter at these summer games, and there are many: the Cold War rivalry, waged not only between the United States and the U.S.S.R. but also between their satellites and surrogates; the struggle for racial and gender ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) equality in sports and in American society writ large; the assertion of pride by newly independent Third World nations; and the burgeoning influence of drugs, money and television on athletics. It's true, as Maraniss writes in his preface, that "in sports, culture and politics — interwoven in so many ways — one could see an old order dying and a new one being born" in August 1960. But some 400 pages and weeks of exciting events later, one sees these games less as a turning point than as just another step along the road. Aside from the overreaching subtitle, Maraniss has written a colorful, fast-moving and often dramatic book. He chose an underexposed subject: Despite the tremendous performances of American athletes such as the young and irrepressible Cassius Clay, as well as the legendary triumph of the barefoot Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila, the Rome Olympics are not remembered as vividly as the games in Mexico City, Montreal or Munich. Television, and its ability to turn medal winners into superstars of sport and advertising, made the difference; the Rome Olympics were the first to capture a significant TV audience, but coverage was still slight by today's standards. In 1960, as Maraniss explains, film of events was flown across the Atlantic via commercial airliner to New York, where it was cut, if it arrived in time, for the CBS Evening News, or for a 15-minute late-night recap narrated by Jim McKay. In that way, the games in Rome certainly changed television history: A then little-known ABC producer named Roone Arledge saw the programs, which led him to create "Wide World of Sports" with McKay as host. Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor at The Washington Post, set a very high standard with his excellent books on Bill Clinton, Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente. His great strength as a biographer is his ability to dig deeply into his subject's story and bring out important themes over time. The nature of the Olympics, in which so many events are held in rapid succession over a compressed period, and in which most athletes perform only a few times on a few days, deprives him of his best asset. In his biography of Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered," Maraniss showed how the coach honed his approach during stops at Fordham, West Point and with the New York Giants long before he reached the frozen tundra of Green Bay's Lambeau Field. In "Rome 1960," the author simply lacks the space to build, even though he begins the stories of some of his central figures, including the effervescent sprinter Wilma Rudolph and the dignified decathlete Rafer Johnson, years before the games. Their victories, which are tales not only of athletic prowess but also of triumph over racial bigotry, are uplifting. But even so, Maraniss has to spread his attention around, and his stars become ensemble players. The book is like a dim sum brunch: lots of dishes that come and go, some before you're altogether ready to move on. Because of this, oddly enough, the stories in the book that stand out are those of performers whose efforts have faded from memory, among them C.K. Yang, the decathlete from Taiwan who almost beat his friend Johnson; India's Milkha Singh, the "Flying Sikh," who became a national hero after he broke the Olympic record in the 400-meter dash, even though three other runners were faster and he did not win a medal; and hard-luck American sprinter Dave Sime, who, after missing the 1956 Melbourne games with an injury, and after being nipped at Rome in the 100-meter dash, led his team to victory in the 4 x 100 relay, only to have the performance disqualified because of a teammate's error. (Sime did come home with a story even rarer than that of a triumphant athlete: He was approached by the CIA to act as an intermediary in an effort to persuade a Soviet athlete to defect; Sime was a reluctant conspirator and, in any event, the effort failed. But it adds a bit of Cold War suspense to the book.) Maraniss does a splendid job of resurrecting these heroes from almost a half-century ago, and of reminding us why we like the Olympics: They are days devoted to spirited young people with rare talents and tremendous discipline who vie for a moment in the sun that, for all but a few, is swiftly eclipsed by the triumphs of another day. Jamie Malanowski is the managing editor of Playboy magazine and author of the satirical novel "The Coup." Reviewed by Jamie Malanowski, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "Evocative, entertaining and often suspenseful - sports history at a very high standard."- Kirkus (starred review) Synopsis: From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Clemente" and "When Pride Still Mattered" comes the blockbuster story of the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome--17 days that helped define the modern world.
Table of Contents A Brief Preface 1 All the Way to Moscow
2 All Roads to Rome
3 No Monarch Ever Held Sway
4 May the Best Man Win
5 Out of the Shadows
6 Heat
7 Quicker Than the Eye
8 Upside Down
9 TrackandField News
10 Black Thursday
Interlude: Descending with Gratitude
11 The Wind at Her Back
12 Liberation
13 The Russians Are Coming
14 The Greatest
15 The Last Laps
16 New Worlds
17 The Soft Life
18 "Successful Completion of the Job"
19 A Thousand Sentinels
20 "The World Is Stirring" Appendix
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Sources
Notes
Index
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781416534075
- Subtitle:
- The Olympics That Changed the World
- Author:
- Maraniss, David
- Publisher:
- Simon & Schuster
- Subject:
- World - General
- Subject:
- Modern - 21st Century
- Subject:
- History
- Subject:
- World
- Subject:
- Olympics
- Subject:
- Cold war
- Subject:
- Olympics -- Political aspects.
- Edition Description:
- S&s Hdcvr
- Publication Date:
- July 2008
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 478
- Dimensions:
- 9.25 x 6.125 in
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