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Politics has always been an integral part of the Olympics - not an occasional intruder in the form of a boycott, protest, or act of terrorism. In this probing social history, distinguished by a lively mix of journalism and scholarship, Allen Guttmann discusses the intended and actual meaning of the modern Olympic Games, from 1896 to 2000. Recounting the memorable and significant athletic events of the Olympics in terms of their social and political impact, Guttmann demonstrates that the modern games were revived to propagate a political message and continue to serve political purposes. This second edition of Guttmann's critically acclaimed history includes coverage of the controversial tenure of Juan Antonio Samaranch as president of the International Olympic Committee, a period tainted by rising drug use among athletes and scandals accompanying the awarding of sites and marked by the debut of openly professional athletes and the significantly increased role of female athletes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Skims the surface
This is a frustrating book.On one hand, there is a lot of good detail and information on the inception and growth of the modern Olympic games.On the other, just when you think Guttmann is going to delve deeper into a topic he simply skips right on by and gives a quick recap of the medal winners in a given year.He barely even mentions the travesty of 1972 in Munich, and makes only passing mentions of some of the iconic moments of the last 50 years.Instead, he seems much more concerned with the behind the scenes wrangling amongst the various members of the IOC.Indeed, the subtitle of the book should be "A history of the IOC leadership."

Thus, a definitive history of the Olympic games remains to be written.Although the blurbs on the back claim this is a landmark in social and political history, it is anything but.Babe Didrickson, Billy Mills, etc are mentioned, but that's about it.Even his discussion of South Africa and the associated boycotts related to Apartheid are fractured and incomplete.

It's worth a read...but I wish I had visited the library for this one rather than spent my money on it.I recommend you do the same. ... Read more

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Endlessly entertaining, these albums of mad miscellany abound with true tales of history's strangest characters and events—from potty potentates to dotty inventions. A mind-boggling excursion through the byways of the bizarre. ... Read more

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Together With Official Olympic And World Records And Proposed Program Of Tenth Olympiad. ... Read more

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For more than a millennium, the ancient Olympics captured the imaginations of the Greeks, until a Christianized Rome terminated the competitions in the fourth century AD. But the Olympic ideal did not die and this book is a succinct history of the ancient Olympics and their modern resurgence.



Classics professor David Young, who has researched the subject for over 25 years, reveals how the ancient Olympics evolved from modest beginnings into a grand festival, attracting hundreds of highly trained athletes, tens of thousands of spectators, and the finest artists and poets. ... Read more

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One of the early concepts of the Olympic Games was to include "intercalated" Games every four years between the normal cycle, and to hold these Games in Athens, the ancestral home of the Olympics. In 1906 the first, and only one, of these games was held. Occurring only two years after the St. Louis Games of 1904 and two years before the London Games of 1908, the Athens Games were considered by many not to be "official"; social and political forces prevented continuation of the intercalation cycle in 1910 and later. Yet these Games were surprisingly successful and helped guarantee the survival of the modern Olympics.This book, fourth in the series on the early Olympics, presents all the data on 29 nation and city-state participants in more than a dozen events in the Athens Games. Scores and descriptions are provided, and many historical errors and omissions in other sources are corrected. Appendices include the published program for the Games, the actual schedule followed during the Games, and country-by country listings of all participating athletes. ... Read more

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The 1908 Olympic Games were controversial. There was almost constant bickering among the American team and the British officials. Because of the controversies, the 1908 Olympics have been termed "The Battle of Shepherd's Bush," referring to the site of the Olympic Stadium. Reports of the 1908 Olympics have been rare and do not for instance contain full results for archery, track and field athletics, football (soccer), gymnastics, motorboating and shooting. A great deal of new information has been discovered by the authors, and this work gives complete results for all events. The information presented is based primarily on 1908 sources. For the first time, definitive word on the sites, dates, events, competitors, and nations as well as the event results are available for all of the 1908 Olympic events, including boxing, cycling, diving, fencing, field hockey, lacrosse, polo, raquets, swimming, lawn tennis, tug-of-war, weightlifting, wrestling and yachting, among other sports. A series of appendices include rarely seen information about the many controversies surrounding the Games. ... Read more

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Watched every two years by more than 2.5 billion people, the Olympics are much more than the world's largest regularly scheduled sporting event; they're an international political and economic colossus. The meaning of the Olympic motto Citius, Altius, Fortius now applies as much to the fast media saturation, high financial stakes, and strong political interests of today's Games as it does to the athletes' performances in the sports competition itself.

Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games chronicles the influential individuals, groups, and events that have shaped the Olympics since the modern Games began in 1896. This insightful and highly readable work offers a critical, historical perspective of the political and social controversies that have surrounded the world's greatest sports spectacle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Politics of the Olympics
I read this book for my term paper for 8th grade on the Politics of the Olympics.We could choose any topic from history, so that's what I chose, because I'm a swimmer.It was really helpful and interesting.It's sad there's so much fighting that has nothing to do with the sports, but that's the way the world is.I wish I could take Prof. Senn's college course.

Politics and Sports Intertwined in the Olympic Games
Alfred Senn is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison History Dept., and that is where he first developed his course entitled "The Political History of the Modern Olympics."This book is theresult of two decades of research and interviews of athletes, sportsfederation administrators, and Olympic officials beginning during the USboycott of the Moscow Games in 1980.This book is a comprehensivepresentation of much of the information from his lectures, and forms thebasic text of the course for undergraduate students.Readers withinacademia will benefit from its quality scholarship and solid documentation. The general public will enjoy its easy readability and gain a broaderknowledge of the "behind the scenes" maneuvering and politickingof the leaders of international sport. What this book can offer that othersoften cannot is the view from the other side of the "IronCurtain."Senn is a Soviet scholar by training and his book includesa large amount of material gathered exclusively from Soviet files andinterviews, a resource closed to many other authors.In the final pages ofthe book he devotes considerable attention to the breakup of the SovietUnion and the athletic consequences of that disintegration for the EasternEuropean sports "machines." I strongly recommend this text toanyone wishing to expand his or her knowledge of the workings of theInternational Olympic Committee and the political conflicts that havearisen over the years within the Games themselves or the Olympic structure. ... Read more

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During the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, much of the world watched and celebrated as athletes broke world records and took home medals, fulfilling their Olympic dreams. The athletes' scores were available instantaneously and are now easily accessible, but what about the performance records of the first modern Olympic athletes? The Modern Olympic Games began in 1896 in Athens, Greece, but an official record of these Olympic games does not exist. This work is the first in a series of comprehensive reference works giving the results of the Olympic Games, beginning in 1896. Based primarily on 1896 sources, the sites, dates, events, competitors, and nations as well as the event results are compiled herein for track and field, cycling, fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis (lawn), weightlifting, wrestling and other sports and events. Although mainly a statistical analysis, this work does include a short synopsis of the Sorbonne Congress and reprints of famous articles about the Olympics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Amazing and spectacular
For the lovers of the olympic history this is a true and unique source of information. It is really amazing to find dates and other stories about
the first Olympic Games of the Modern Era who never before I have seen anywhere.
If you like the history of the olympic games you CAN NOT miss it.

The most complete summary of the 1896 Olympics
This work has everything you might want to know about the 1896 Olympic Games: results, back ground stories, statistics, competitor information. The best part is that all controversies on the results - quite a few - are carefully documented so one can see WHY the authors have listed the results as they did. Also, several contemporary articles on the Games give a good picture of these Olympic Games. Because these texts are original, you can once again read and judge yourself. ... Read more

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This is the first complete history of the Games' most storied race. From ancient Greece to Atlanta 1996, the book chronicles the race's development--the heroes, the controversies, and the stories that emerged from the ultimate Olympic challenge. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Stories and Easy Reading
This book is made up of 29 chapters, one for each Olympic Marathon race (through 1996).The chapters average 6 pages each, which makes this book very easy to read.Each chapter/race is a fascinating story.And the book is very well written.A great read. ... Read more

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The 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis were both unusual and controversial. One of the major problems for Olympic scholars has been to determine which of the events at these Games were truly of Olympic caliber. The Games were included as part of the World's Fair, and every athletic contest that took place under the Fair's auspices was deemed "Olympic." These activities included croquet and water polo, high school and college championships in football and basketball, as well as the "Anthropology Days" events in which members of "primitive" "tribes" competed against one another. The author demonstrates, after great deliberation, that 16 events of the 21 overall were truly Olympic sports and gives descriptions, scores, and analyses for each (as well as for the five non-Olympic events). Appendices include literature relating to these games, lists of noncompeting foreign entrants, and a guide to all competitors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A needed work for an obscure yet first American olympic game
Author Mallon gives a textbook account of the 1904 first American Olympic Game. The individual scorings are meticulously done and the bibliography is most complete. Anyone researching this event has an array of sources at hisdisposal. The only fault here is in the lack of pictures of this eventlogo, its outstanding competitors, and local color scenes.This workhowever does fill an important gap in the usual commentary on modernolympic history. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Lots of information crammed in
The first thing to be said about this goldmine of Olympic information is that in order to cram all the information into 528 large pages, it is printed using a small font size, which is even harder to read when italicized - and the first few paragraphs of each chapter, which contain comments by an official or athlete, are italicized. If you are concerned about eye-strain, either use a magnifying glass or only read for brief periods at a time. Actually, the nature of this book makes it ideal for dipping in and out of anyway.

The book begins with a foreword by Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, followed by a preface by the author. Neither of those contain italicized text, but the introduction, subtitled Survival, begins with italicized comments by Cathy Freeman. The idea that the Olympics are threatened with extinction seems far-fetched, but they are a political event as well as a sporting event, so I suppose nothing should be taken for granted. Corruption and scandal are never far away from the Olympics, but I'd be very surprised if they don't continue to appear every fourth year, as they have done since 1896. The original Olympics of ancient Greece died, but circumstances were very different then.

The first two chapters cover the ancient Greek Olympics and the development of the idea by Baron Pierre de Coubertin for reviving the Olympics. Chapter 3 covers the inaugural modern Olympics of 1896 and each Olympics thereafter (including the Winter Olympics) has its own chapter. Interspersed between the chapters on specific Olympics are other chapters, which generally look at what happened in the build-up or aftermath to the big events. Major off-field episodes such as the 1980 boycott are thus kept apart from the sporting chapters, but the terrorist attack in 1972 happened during the Munich Olympics and are therefore included within that chapter. In the case of Ben Johnson, the 100 metres event itself, including a picture of the award ceremony, is covered in the Seoul 1988 chapter, but a separate chapter is dedicated to the subsequent fall-out.

There are extensive appendices, but by far the most interesting are Appendix B (results) and Appendix C (medal tables). So at a glance, you can see who won gold, silver and bronze in each event, or you can see the medal table for each Olympics covered. As the title suggests, this book covers the Olympics up to and including Athens 2004.

If you can put up with the small typeface, this official history of the Olympics is truly a goldmine of information, though you may prefer to buy a more recent edition such as The Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC: Athens to Beijing, 1894-2008 (Official History of the Olympic Games & the Ioc). Having already bought this one, I won't be in a hurry to buy it, since all the information I might need about subsequent Olympics should be available on the internet.

Readable, Practical and Definitive
This book was purchased as a gift for an aspiring Beijing 2008 Olympic decathlete, and I was extremely pleased with its concise content, historical data, illustrations, and overall presentation.
A great reference book and a perfect "coffee-table" book. Thankyou.

Worthwhile, though challenging reading
A decent retrospective of over a century of Olympic history. It is not a smooth read, though, and you will need to take frequent breaks to rest your eyes due to the small type. I also noticed several errors in the statistical information in the back of the book, which the author claims was done by a third-party. It was still a worthwhile purchase and does enhance my Olympic library. ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "The Olympic Games," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have The Olympic Games in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with The Olympic Games when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name The Olympic Games, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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Surveys the Olympic Games from 1896 to the present. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Great Book.

A very informative and interesting book.If you're into history, you won't be disappointed.

A good account of the 1936 Olympic Games
The Berlin Olympics of 1936 was perhaps the first games in which politics played a significant role.For this reason, it is considered to be one of the most controversial Olympic Games of modern times.But it was not just the politics of the Third Reich that cast it's shadow over the Games - other politicial considerations, particularly with regard to racial tensions, both Jewish and Black, made its mark.Surprisingly, the Jewish question was brought to bear on not only the selection of the German team, but also the American, in what must surely be a surprise to most readers.The long running dispute between "amateur" and "professional" athletes also raises its head.Hilton delves into each of these issues and how they came to bear upon the Games.The organization of the Games is also discussed, including Hitler's dominance of the process.

Of course, the Games is not just backroom politics.After all, it is the world's largest sporting event, and the sporting participants and their endeavors come under scrutiny. The star of the Games was undoubtedly Jesse Owens.But Hilton has also thrown the spotlight on other athletic notables, including the lesser lights of the American track and field team, along with Hendrika Mastenbroek, whose efforts in the pool were largely overlooked, despite winning 3 golds.There is passing comment on the gender controversy between Helen Stephens and Stella Walsh, two track athletes competing for Britain and Poland respectively.It is not just the athlete's sporting endeavors that is discussed by Hilton, but also what became of many of them afterwards.

A previous reviewer has commented on the style of the author's writing: "And that was the seventh day."I too found this tedious.Christopher Hilton has almost informal style at times to his writing.While it works for his racing car driver biographies (his books "Ayrton Senna: The Hard Edge of Genuis" and "Alain Prost" are superb) it does not come off so well here.It should have been toned down in my opinion.Nonetheless, this is really a minor bugbear."Hitler's Olympics" is a good account of the 1936 Berlin Games and is well worth a look for an insight into the personalities, politics and competitive endeavors of one of the most controversial Olympic Games ever. At the conclusion of the book, there is a statistics section, which lists the medal winners of the Games, along with comparisons (where possible) to the 2004 Athens Games. "Hitler's Olympics" also includes an insert of black and white photography.

Excellent book
This was a very well written book. I enjoyed the person stories of some of the athltes. What I did not like was some of the more choppy sections with sentences like "And that was the second day" or "And on the 15th the Fins arrived". While it did allude to the timing of everything, it seemed a bit choppy.

Overall, I would highly reccomend the book, it was an informative and entertaining read. ... Read more

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"The Olympics' Strangest Moments" recounts the bizarre, controversial, inept, heroic and plain unlucky from the first modern games in 1896 to the return of the games to their birthplace in Athens in 2004. The world's greatest sporting occasion has been packed with unusual occurrences as well as creating unlikely heroes such as Dorando Pietri, who missed out on marathon gold after being helped over the finish line by over-anxious officials, and 'Eric the Eel' from Equatorial Guinea who was acknowledged as the slowest swimmer in the history of the games. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A fun look at the Olympics since 1896
Like others in the series of books about strangest moments, this book merely offers selected episodes, making no attempt to chronicle a definitive history. Other books do that, but they aren't necessarily more enjoyable. The book includes an introduction giving a brief history of the ancient Olympics, which began in 776 BC and continued until banned in 393 AD. One wonders what might have happened had they continued unbroken to the present day.

The episodes are presented in historical order, the first three being from the inaugural Olympics (in the modern era) of 1896. It seems that the very first winner (an American) was refused permission to take leave from his university, so quit his studies and spent his life savings on the trip to Greece. It's an interesting story but not exactly strange. As I've learned from other books in the series, strange is interpreted loosely, though some of the episodes really are strange, and they don't all concern the winners. Indeed, many of the best stories are about the losers. Still, it is important to point out that this book confines itself to the summer Olympics, so neither the exploits of Eddie the Eagle nor the Tonya Harding scandal find a place here.

The early episodes offer a glimpse into a very different world than the one we know today. The 1896 swimming events were held in the bitterly cold and choppy waters of the Mediterranean, the winner eventually coming second in the 1924 Olympics special arts competition for architecture, although it seems that he should have won that event. Now, whatever happened to that Olympic architecture event? The 1900 Paris Olympics featured a cricket competition with only two teams entered, the winners being a British team from Devon and Somerset, with the losers being a French team made up of staff from the British embassy. The swimming events were staged in the River Seine. How things have changed since then.

Fascinating as the early episodes are, I suspect that most people buying this book will do so to be reminded of more recent events that they originally saw live on TV. Mexico in 1968 earned its place history because of the black power salutes, Bob Beamon's long jump and Dick Fosbury's new style of high jumping, which has since become the standard method of performing the high jump. Four episodes represent the 1972 Olympics, though they are remembered mainly for one of them - the terrorist outrage.

The eighties are famous for Budd versus Decker in 1984 and for a nasty accident to Greg Louganis in 1988, both of which are featured here, but most of all they are remembered for the cheating that occurred in 1988. If the dubious decisions in the boxing competition constituted a scandal, Ben Johnson's 100 metres sprint performance was an even bigger scandal that still reverberates around the sporting world over twenty years later. Six pages are devoted to this episode here, though that is miniscule compared to all the coverage that it has received elsewhere.

More recent episodes remind us of Derek Redmond limping up the track in Barcelona, Linford Christie's false start and disqualificationin Atlanta and Eric the Eel's modest performances swimming in Sydney. He was swimming's answer to Eddie the Eagle.

This book is sometimes funny, occasionally tragic, but always entertaining. You don't have to be fanatical about the Olympics to enjoy this book. ... Read more