"Faster! Higher! Stronger! Stranger! A glorious tapestry of legendary characters, forgotten records, crazy accomplishments, unbelievable feats, wacky contests, and controversial moments, Total Olympics is pure pleasure for anyone who loves the world's greatest sporting event. Discover how the modern Games began, in an out-of-the-way Victorian English town named Much Wenlock. Long-discontinued Olympic sports like tug of war, firefighting, live pigeon...

A renowned sportswriter describes the reinvention and modern history of the Olympic Games, from its rebirth in 1896 Athens to the present, highlighting all the classic moments of highest achievement, including Jesse Owens, Nadia Comaneci, the Miracle on Ice and Usain Bolt. --Publisher's description. Renowned sportswriter David Goldblatt has been hailed by the Wall Street Journal for writing "with the expansive eye of a social and cultural critic"...

The Summer Olympic Games, held every four years, is the biggest festival of sport on the planet, creating instant heroes and gallant losers, and memorable moments of triumph and despair. Published in association with the official Olympic Museum in Lausanne, this exceptional volume?revised, updated, and in an exciting new format with more than 225 photographs ?explores the history of these games. Beginning with Ancient Greece, it moves forward to the...

1936, 18 African-American athletes participated in the Berlin Olympic Games, however history forgot all except one. This is the story of the other 17.

"The Olympics have not always been the commercialized juggernaut we know today, but as Jules Boykoff makes clear in this sto-ry-filled and devastating history, the Games have since their inception had a thoroughly checkered political history. Pierre de Coubertin, the aristocrat who gave birth to the modern olympics, was against allowing women to participate, and allowed African countries to participate only to offset their "individual laziness." Boykoff,...

"Although fans the world over have been fascinated by the modern Summer Olympics since 1896, the Winter Olympics didn't officially begin until 1924. The event celebrates cold-weather sports, displaying the talents of skiers, ice skaters, hockey players, and, most recently, snowboarders. Like its summer counterpart, the Winter Games are dedicated to bringing together the world's top athletes to honor their talents and see who gets to stand on the medal...

"Swimming is a long thread that connects the Olympic heroes of today with the real and mythic ones of the past across more than ten millennia--a recorded history that begins in a cave in the Egyptian desert and sweeps across athletes and poets, statesmen and emperors, humans and gods; across the whole human experience, the entire human story. Splash! weaves a 10,000-year-old tale that begins in a bone-dry cave in the remote southwest corner of Egypt,...

"The true story of the birth of Olympic basketball at the 1936 Summer Games in Hitler's Germany"--