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
"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.
About the Author
David Maraniss, an associate editor at The Washington Post, is the author of critically acclaimed best-selling books on Bill Clinton, Vince Lombardi, Vietnam and the sixties, Roberto Clemente, and the 1960 Rome Olympics. He won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Clinton, was part of a Post team that won the 2007 Pulitzer for coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy, and has been a Pulitzer finalist three other times, including in the nonfiction history category for They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967. Maraniss is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a member of Biographers International Organization. He lives in Washington, D.C. and Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, Linda. They have two grown children and three granddaughters.
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