Power Games

Power Games:A Political History of the Olympics

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A timely, no-holds barred, critical political history of the modern Olympic Games

The Olympics have a checkered, sometimes scandalous, political history. Jules Boykoff, a former US Olympic team member, takes readers from the event’s nineteenth-century origins, through the Games’ flirtation with Fascism, and into the contemporary era of corporate control. Along the way he recounts vibrant alt-Olympic movements, such as the Workers’ Games and Women’s Games of the 1920s and 1930s as well as athlete-activists and political movements that stood up to challenge the Olympic machine.

Reviews

  • An Olympic history that simply hasn’t been told.

    Olympic medalist John Carlos, author of The John Carlos Story
  • Should be on every Olympian’s bookshelf.

    Laurence Halsted, fencer and “Team GB” Olympian at Rio 2016
  • [Boykoff’s] jaunty polemic Power Games is billed as a political history of the Olympics. It is actually more of a call-to-arms to people faced with this giant intrusion.

    Financial Times