The Games

Description

David Goldblatt writes about sports 'with the expansive eye of a social and cultural critic' (Wall Street Journal). In The Games he delivers a magisterial history of the biggest and most beloved sporting event of them all: the Olympics. He tells the epic story of the Games, from their reinvention in Athens in 1896 to the present day, chronicling classic moments of sporting achievement from Jesse Owens to Nadia Comaneci, the Miracle on Ice to Usain Bolt. He goes beyond the medal tables to explore how international conflicts have played out at the Olympics, including the clash of rising America with the fading British Empire, the role of the Games for fascist Germany and Italy, and the cold war and the struggles of the post-colonial world for recognition. And he tells the extraordinary story of how women fought to be included on equal terms, how the Paralympics started in the wake of World War Two, and how the Olympics have reflected changing attitudes to race and ethnicity, from African 'savages' being pitted against American students in 1904 to the Black Power salute in 1968 and beyond.

Promotion info

The definitive sporting, social and political history of the modern Olympic Games, the world that made them and the world they helped to shape.

Reviews

Gracefully written and compellingly argued, this is one of the best books of the year and one of the best sports books ever written. Kirkus

Author description

David Goldblatt was born in 1965 and inherited, for his sins, Tottenham Hotspurs from his father. He has published three highly acclaimed books of football: The Ball is Round: (2006), an astonishingly ambitious global history of the game, Futebol Nation (2014), a footballing history of Brazil, and The Game of Our Lives (2014) about the meaning and making of English football. He has also edited the World Football Yearbook, made sporting documentaries for BBC Radio, reported for the Guardian and the New York Times and teaches at De Montford University, Leicester and Pitzer College, Los Angeles.