David Maraniss - Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World

Read by David Maraniss, 96 kbps, Unabridged
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rome-1960-david-maraniss/1112374388

Overview
"There was a deep 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. There was increasing pressure to provide equal rights for blacks and women as they emerged from generations of discrimination.

Publishers Weekly
Overshadowed by more flamboyant or tragic Olympics, the 1960 Rome games were a sociopolitical watershed, argues journalist Maraniss (Clemente) in this colorful retrospective. The games showcased Cold War propaganda ploys as the Soviet Union surged past the U.S. in the medal tally. Steroids and amphetamines started seeping into Olympian bloodstreams. The code of genteel amateurism—one weight-lifter was forbidden to accept free cuts from a meat company—began crumbling in the face of lavish Communist athletic subsidies and under-the-table shoe endorsement deals. And civil rights and anti-colonialism became conspicuous themes as charismatic black athletes—supercharged sprinter Wilma Rudolph, brash boxing phenom Cassius Clay, barefoot Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila—grabbed the limelight while the IOC sidestepped the apartheid issue. Still, we're talking about the Olympics, and Maraniss can't help wallowing in the classic tropes: personal rivalries, judging squabbles, come-from-behind victories and inspirational backstories of obstacles overcome (Rudolph wins the gold, having hurdled Jim Crow and childhood polio that left her in leg braces). As usual, these Olympic stories don't quite bear up under the mythic symbolism they're weighted with (with the exception perhaps of Abebe Bikila), but Maraniss provides an intelligent context for his evocative reportage. Photos.

Kirkus Reviews
Timely, illuminating account of the 17th Olympiad, with its many firsts, including the first doping scandal in Olympic history. Washington Post editor and Pulitzer-winner Maraniss (Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, 2006, etc.) has a talent for condensing sprawling events into comprehensible episodes. In this instance, those episodes take place on and off the field. Many, indeed, take place in secret government facilities and back alleys. The 1960 Rome games, for instance, took place at the height of the Cold War, when the United States and Soviet Union both took considerable pains to convert a theoretically apolitical contest of amateurs into a thoroughly politicized, near-professional endeavor. As Maraniss' account opens, for instance, track star Dave Sime is receiving an assignment from Washington to "run for your country, and bag a defector for your country as well." While other American athletes distributed Russian-language pamphlets extolling the virtues of life in the West, Russian women athletes stepped onto the Rome tarmac wearing "sharp beige suits, hosiery, high-heeled brown pumps-and lipstick," having been instructed to show the sexist sportswriters of the world that beauty salons were not unknown behind the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile, African-American athletes such as Rafer Johnson-the first to carry the flag in the parade of nations-and Wilma Rudolph struggled to keep their discontents about Jim Crow America to themselves, a matter that seemed not to trouble a young boxer named Cassius Clay, whose consciousness would not be heightened for another few years with the adoption of a new name, Muhammad Ali. As to the firsts: Maraniss carefully relates stories of the first doping scandal in Olympic history, the advent of anabolic steroid use, the inauguration of the Olympics as a television event-and the first recognition on the part of the U.S. government, it seems, that the Soviets had a point in thinking that "some . . . sporting victories have had certain propaganda benefits."Evocative, entertaining and often suspenseful-sports history at a very high standard.