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| Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World | 
 enlarge | Author: David Maraniss
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy Used: $6.94
You Save: $20.01 (74%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 20687
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 1416534075
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.48
EAN: 9781416534075
ASIN: 1416534075
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: SLIGHT DUST JACKET WEAR; HEAVY SCUFFING ON BOTTOM COVER EDGE; PAGES ARE IN EXCELLENT CONDITION: CLEAN AND UNMARKED
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Amazon.com Review
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 Maranisss quiet reporting, as he deftly removes himself from a storyline that is still relevant today. --Dave Callanan
Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
History made interesting and easy to read July 3, 2008
28 out of 28 found this review helpful
I bought this book after hearing an interview with Maraniss on NPR. Normally, this isn't my kind of book. I'm not an athlete. I'm not a fanatic about the Olympics. I'd rather knit or read a cozy mystery that I can breeze through in a night. And yet, I love this book.
Each chapter is like a short essay on some facet of the 1960 Olympics: the controverial decision in the men's swimming event, the Tigerbelles' encounters with racisim on their road the Olympics, the political controvery between China and Taiwan, and more. Maraniss paints a picture of the world's political and social climate to show how those factors affected the 1960 Olympics and how the 1960 Olympics affected the world.
Each story is compelling--48 years later, I feel minor outrage that Lance Larson wasn't awarded the gold for men's swimming. I understand the terror Rafer Johnson must have felt outside of Lenin Stadium when the Russian crowd surged toward him after his defeat of Kuznetsov. Maraniss deftly captures the human stories and makes this reader care. I'm only 5 chapters into the book, but I wish I could skip work today to finish the rest of the book.
Before reading this book, I hadn't watched the Olympics in over 20 years. Now, I'm psyched for 2008 Summer Olympics!
Terrific Reading about the World at a Crossroads - and Glimpses of Sports Superstars, too! July 3, 2008
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
The world is changing so fast right now that most of us can barely keep up with the daily news that affects our lives, jobs and future. So, it's a rare and wonderful treat when a book comes along that carries us back to a time and place when the world changed more slowly - to show us one of those events that truly did change our global culture. When such books come along, they're usually about wars - but not this new gem by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Maraniss.
Given my own background as a journalist, I'll confess that I was puzzled by Maraniss' decision in selecting "Rome 1960" for a thick new book of nearly 500 pages (that's counting all the extras at the end). As I picked up the book, I kept asking myself: Why did he call this particular meet -- "The Olympics that Changed the World"?
As a specialist in religion and culture, I've immersed myself in histories of other Olympics: the 1924 "Chariots of Fire" Olympics, the 1936 Nazi-dominated Olympics, the 1972 Olympics when terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes - and even the 1964 Tokyo Olympics that were a milestone in global culture in part because of Kon Ichikawa's historic documentary film.
But having read Maraniss' new book, I've got to agree - Rome in 1960 ranks right up there as a milestone in world culture.
I had not considered the roles of the major players who all collided in Rome that year - including the now-infamous anti-Semite and pro-Nazi American czar of the Olympics movement: Avery Brundage. If you don't find yourself drawn to "Sports" - but you are fascinated by 20th-Century history, especially the 1930s, Fascism and the Holocaust - this is a "must read" book for you. Think of it as a "sequel" to books about the controversial Nazi Olympics in which Hitler, Goebbels and Riefenstahl essentially pulled a fast one on Brundage in convincing him to help them celebrate their glorious new Reich.
As a journalist, I'm a longtime follower of new research into that earlier era - and Maraniss picks up the Brundage story in 1960 and pretty much nails the man and his many levels of hypocrisy - and lets us see how this antique figure collided with many of the realities of later-20th-Century culture. Among the key details Maraniss adds to our understanding of Brundage are personal jottings he made during the Rome Olympics that, among other things, complained of the emergence of "Jews ... demanding restitution for everything lost and lot more." (Of course, Brundage somehow managed to continue at the helm through 1972 in Munich, where controversy continued to surround his decisions.)
What's great about this new book is that everything I've said about the Brundage sub-plot is just one of many compelling storylines that Maraniss explores in these 500 pages. Among other things: These were the Olympics in which Cassius Clay exploded onto the global stage, later to transform himself into Muhammad Ali. These were the games of Wilma Rudolph. These were the games in which commercial interests were knocking down old-school barriers that claimed to be preserving an "amateur" tradition. Doping became an issue at Rome. Two Chinas and two Germanys jostled at these games.
This is summer reading at its best. The next Olympic games are looming. The world is no longer merely tilting on its axis. No, global culture now is spinning at a topsy-turvy rate, it seems.
Pick up "Rome 1960." If you're like me, you won't stop until you've read the whole thing - and you'll come away understanding just a little more about how we all got to this place we're standing in this strange new century.
In Time For The 2008 Olympics July 13, 2008
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
Mr. Maraniss is a former reporter of the Washington Post and author of acclaimed biographies of Bill Clinton and Vince Lombardi. He is a wonderful writer and storyteller. With the approach of the 2008 Summer Games, "Rome, 1960" takes us back to a simple era, without the terrorism threats, outrageous commerialism and non-stop TV coverage. The Cold War was the backdrop and the author weaves in the stories of the athletes, the familiar and the unfamiliar. I don't know that these Olympics changed the world as Mr. Maraniss argues (the 1968 Games in Mexico City or the Munich Games in 1972 have a better claim) but the world has changed since then.
SPORTS AND HISTORY - WONDERFUL COMBINATION - WELL WRITTEN! August 17, 2008
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
I am not particularly fond, overall, of sports literature and normally do not read in this particular genre, although, I must admit I enjoy watching sports, follow various sports year by year, and indeed, have been an overall participant in various sports, all my life, more so when I was younger. The Olympic games have always occupied a special place for me and the 1960 Olympics was the first one that I became truly aware of what was going on. My age at the time and the fact that I actually was able to watch many of the vents on television had much to do with this. That being said, I will admit to being a history nut and this work by David Maraniss is a history as much as it is a work about a particular sport.
The 1960 Olympics was held at a time when the world was on the cusp of great change. Not only in the United States were these changes about to take place, but the entire world was on the edge, and we were beginning one of those periodic watershed eras that come along every so often. New nations in Africa were being formed. The old Colonial powers had gasped their last and were no more. Governments were changing, attitudes were changing and the world was just beginning to become wired. There were two super powers at that time, the United States and Russia. These two countries were locked in a war, the Cold War and this war was at its height. These Olympics held in Rome, had this struggle of ideas as a constant backdrop and its presents was quite significant. The two Germanys, for the first time, were acting as a single team; not having completely split as they would soon do and the entire contest was not only the United States v/s Russia, but it was East v/s West.
Racism, sexism and all the other old evils of this world were alive and well. The games were still controlled by Avery Brundage and his band of "old guard." Brundage was truly a horrid man and represented the worse of the "ruling class" of the time and treated the Olympic movement as a private fiefdom and all those who participated as his own flock of surfs. Truly, in my opinion, and the author's as well, you could not have found a man, or group of men, who personified racism, sexism, arrogance, privileged class ethos and egotism more than Brundage and his cohorts.
The author's easy writing style makes this an easy, understandable and enjoyable read. As has been pointed out, each chapter is almost a news report, cum essay, on different aspect of these games; addressing individuals, events and the ever present political background. Many of the great names appear is this work; Wilma Rudolph. Lance Larson. Otis Davis, Herb Elliott, Cassius Clay, Rafer Johnson, C.K. Yang, Abebe Bikila, Al Oerter, the Tigerbelles and their coach Ed Temple, and many, many more (to name just a few) of the truly greats are written about, assessed and discussed. The author has given us a real feel for the times and has given us much to reflect over. Communications, training methods, attitudes toward different sexes and races, the beginnings of doping, how the athletes were treated and how various fans responded are all covered in this fine work.
I do take some umbrage with the assertion that these games change the world. I personally feel that these games were held at a time of change and that those who participated, at ever level, were merely reacting to the changes taking place rather that actually forcing the changes themselves. This is a mote point though and really has little to do with the actually book. It the subtitle upsets you, ignore it.
This was a very informative, well written, well researched work and it as truly a joy to read.
Don Blankenship
The Ozarks
Enigmas made visible July 3, 2008
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
A grand comprehensive book accounting the epic 1960 olympics. From broad sweeping history changing events to anectotal details. This book presents humanity and sociology played out through the drama of olympic physical and psychologic competition...... Not a surprize from an author who has proven his worth through other wrings.. . . . He puts you into a juxtaposition of events. A time of change/intrigue/excitement at a pivotal juncture of sports/personalities/media. As the 1960 olympics progess the enigmatic relationships and quality of atmosphere are brilliantly presented by Maraniss.
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