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.
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