Olympics category: 421 books

At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, track and field star Jesse Owens ran himself straight into international glory by winning four gold medals. But the life of Jesse Owens is much more than a sports story. Born in rural Alabama under the oppressive Jim Crow laws, Owens's family suffered many hardships....

This book was purchased by the US Olympic Committee and given to each member of the US Olympic Team of the Summer 2004 Games as well as those participating in the Special Olympics. Nothing draws people together quite like sports. This book explores exactly why that is. In anticipation of the nostalgic...

The drama, the variety, the spectacle - Shannon can't get enough of it. She is an American student who has always been fascinated by the Olympic Games; her father has a lifelong love affair with China. They team up for the Beijing games and the adventure of a lifetime. Without the filter of...

This is your complete guide to Diving at the London Summer Olympics. Learn about diving, who is on the American Olympic team and which athletes to expect on the podium. This guide is your complete insider look at Diving in the 2012 London Olympics. Includes tips on how to become an Olympic diver!

This is your complete guide to Men's Artistic Gymnastics at the London Summer Olympics. Learn about artistic gymnastics, who is on the American Olympic team and which athletes to expect on the podium. This guide is your complete insider look at Men's Artistic Gymnastics in the 2012 London Olympics. Includes tips on how to become an Olympic gymnast!

How do Olympic legacies come about? This book offers an alternative approach to the study of Olympic and mega-sport event legacy, challenging how legacy is conceptualised and practised. It shifts the focus from legacy as a retrospective concept concerned with what has been left behind after the Games,...

Shortlisted for the 2015 William Hill Australian Sports Book of the Year Award This is a tale of innocents abroad. Thirty-three athletes left Australia in May 1936 to compete in the Hitler Olympics in Berlin. Believing sporting competition was the best antidote to tyranny, they put their qualms...

Often seen as the host nation's largest ever logistical undertaking, accommodating the Olympics and its attendant security infrastructure brings seismic changes to both the physical and social geography of its destination. Since 1976, the defence of the spectacle has become the central feature of...

The Olympic Games is unquestionably the largest and most important sporting event in the world. Yet who exactly is accountable for its successes and failures? This book examines the legitimacy and accountability of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This non-governmental organisation wields...

When the modern Olympic movement was launched in Paris in 1894, the goal was to create a global festival of sport that would unite athletes and nations in the spirit of sportsmanship and goodwill. The Olympic movement went on to achieve that lofty goal, but its founders could never have imagined that...

XVIII Olympiad, the sixteenth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins in Japan, at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the first Games ever held in Asia. The Tokyo Games were also the first ever broadcast globally by satellite.The book tells the story of Tokyo heroes like Osamu Watanabe of Japan,...

The X Olympiad, the tenth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins with the Games of Los Angeles, 1932. With the entire world locked in the depths of the Great Depression, the book describes the thrills of the world's greatest festival of sport played out against the backdrop of Hollywood's Golden...

XXVI Olympiad, the twenty-fourth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins with the celebration of the centenary of the modern Olympic movement at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games. Atlanta played host to a then-record 197 nations, many of which did not exist when the modern Olympics began in 1896.The...

The IX Olympiad, the ninth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins by exploring the Summer Games of Amsterdam, 1928, the first to feature the Olympic flame as well as the first to include track and field and gymnastics competitions for women.Well established as the world's greatest festival of...