Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World
by David Maraniss
from Simon & Schuster
Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: Armed with the same engaging narrative found in Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss chronicles the triumphs, tragedies, and treacheries of "the Olympics that changed the world" with Rome 1960. The same Games that announced the greatness of icons like Cassius Clay, Wilma Rudolph, and Rafer Johnson, also exposed a growing unrest between East and West, black and white, and male and female. Even the host city of Rome, Maraniss recounts, was "infused with a golden hue...an illuminating that comes with a moment of historical transition, when one era is dying and another is being born." With moving portraits of the Games's remarkable personalities woven among tales of espionage and propaganda, Rome 1960 explores an Olympics unable to fight off the troubles of the modern world. Cold War sniping and issues of social inequalities were spilling into fields and stadiums, and the face of sport was rapidly changing. History buffs and sports fans alike will appreciate Maraniss's quiet reporting, as he deftly removes himself from a storyline that is still relevant today. --Dave Callanan
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.
Michael Phelps: Beneath the Surface
by Michael Phelps
from Sports Publishing LLC
Eight Olympic medals, including six gold and two bronze in Athens in 2004, Michael Phelps is the current holder of six world records, and seven gold medals at the 2007 World Aquatics Championships. Phelps is well on his way to his ambitious goal of "changing the sport of swimming." But despite Michael's pre-eminence in the pool, his story is not a swimming diary but a tale of adversities overcome and redemption through persistence. This new softcover edition contains a substantial update, as Phelps reflects on his life since his record-setting performance in Athens. The Olympic star reflects on his November 2004, DUI arrest. He recalls his experiences as a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Phelps also takes readers poolside for his record-setting 2007 performance in Australia and shares his thoughts heading into the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China.
The Complete Book of the Olympics: 2008 Edition
by David Wallechinsky
from Aurum Press
With a complete statistical record since the 1896 founding of the modern Games—including medals won and times, distances, or scores recorded by the top eight competitors in all events (from staples such as the marathon to long-discontinued competitions such as the tug of war), this encyclopedic tome contains
The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal
by David Halberstam
from Ballantine Books
"Astonishing . . . Moving . . . One of the best books ever written about a sport."
*Walter Clemons
Newsweek
"A PENETRATING, FASCINATING AND REMARKABLY SUSPENSEFUL NARRATIVE."
*David Guy
Chicago Tribune
In The Amateurs, David Halberstam once again displays the unique brand of reportage, both penetrating and supple, that distinguished his bestselling The Best and the Brightest and October 1964. This time he has taken for his subject the dramatic and special world of amateur rowing. While other athletes are earning fortunes in salaries and-or endorsements, the oarsmen gain fame only with each other and strive without any hope of financial reward.
What drives these men to endure a physical pain known to no other sport? Who are they? Where do they come from? How do they regard themselves and their competitors? What have they sacrificed, and what inner demons have they appeased? In answering these questions, David Halberstam takes as his focus the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton. The man who wins will gain the right to represent the United States in the 84 Olympiad; the losers will then have to struggle further to gain a place in the two- or four-man boats. And even if they succeed, they will have to live with the bitter knowledge that they were not the best, only close to it.
Informative and compelling, The Amateurs combines the vividness of superb sportswriting with the narrative skills of a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent.
"RIVETING."
*Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
The New York Times
"[A] MASTERFUL JOB . . . Maintains the suspense to the very last stroke . . . Halberstam makes us care about the four men, their disappointments and the brutal testing of their friendships."
*Dan Levin
Sports Illustrated
Amazing Pace
by Paul McMullen
from Rodale Books
• provides the most revealing look yet at a young man who became a world-class athlete before he had the chance to grow up—by respected Baltimore Sun journalist Paul McMullen, who followed Phelps’s rise from an obscure 14-year-old to the most scrutinized competitor at the world’s biggest sporting event
• details the plotting of his career, from turning professional at age 16, to the management of the first crises he encountered
Golden Girl: How Natalie Coughlin Fought Back, Challenged Conventional Wisdom, and Became America's Olympic Champion
by Michael Silver
from Rodale Books
Five years ago, Natalie Coughlin’s promising swimming career was all but extinguished when a devastating shoulder injury ended her dreams for the 2000 Olympics. After becoming, at age 15, the first person ever to qualify for all 14 women’s events at the U.S. Nationals, she seemed destined to follow the path of so many other young swimming stars—devoured by an oppressive training schedule.
In Golden Girl, Sports Illustrated’s Michael Silver—coauthor of many bestselling sports memoirs—including Dennis Rodman’s, Kurt Warner’s, and Jerry Rice’s—tells the story of Natalie’s remarkable journey back from the brink. With complete access to her family, friends, coaches, teammates, and adversaries, Silver details how she made the crucial choice to train with University of California coach Teri McKeever. Together the two, star and coach, have defied long-standing training methods, forcing the swimming community to rethink the ways in which it treats its talent. An inspirational story of a complex and courageous young athlete, Golden Girl is also a fascinating portrait of the fractious world of competitive swimming.
Off the Deep End
by W. Hodding Carter
from Algonquin Books
Hodding Carter dreamed of being an Olympian as a kid. He worshipped Mark Spitz, swam his heart out, and just missed qualifying for the Olympic trials in swimming as a college senior. Although he didn't qualify for the 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, or 2004 Olympics, he never stopped believing he could make it. And despite past failures and the passage of time, Carter began his quest once more at the age of forty-two.
Maybe he's crazy. But then again, maybe he's onto something. He entered the Masters Championships. He swam three to four miles each day, six days a week. He pumped iron, trained with former Olympians, and consulted with swimming gurus and medical researchers who taught him that the body doesn't have to age. He swam with sharks (inadvertently) in the Virgin Islands, suffered hypothermia in a relay around Manhattan, and put on fifteen pounds of muscle. Amazingly, he discovered that his heartbeat could keep pace with the best of the younger swimmers'. And each day he felt stronger, swam faster, and became more convinced that he wasn't crazy.
This outrageous, courageous chronicle is much more than Carter's race with time to make it to the Olympics. It's the exhilarating story of a man who rebels against middle age the only way he can—by chasing a dream. His article in Outside magazine, on which this book is based, was the winner of a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.
Gold in the Water: The True Story of Ordinary Men and Their Extraordinary Dream of Olympic Glory
by P. H. Mullen
from St. Martin's Griffin
Author P. H. Mullen chronicles their journey to the 2000 Olympic Games and presents one of the most powerful and moving sports books ever written. Boldly sweeping in literary power and pace, this startling book will permanently change how you view the Olympic athlete.
It is a fascinating world of suspense and emotion where human desire for excellence rules over all, and where there are no second chances for glory. But above all, Gold in the Water is a triumph of the human spirit.
Michael Phelps (Amazing Athletes)
by Sheila Rivera
from LernerSports
Letters to a Young Gymnast (Art of Mentoring)
by Nadia Comaneci
from Basic Books
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