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swalls95's review against another edition
1.0
Made a rather interesting topic... dull and boring. A weird structure putting several Olympics together, would make more sense having smaller chapters on each Olympics. Also, far too much political chat and not enough information on the sporting stars and their achievements.
Fuck me, it's enough to send a narcoleptic to sleep. 1* for me. Sorry not sorry.
Fuck me, it's enough to send a narcoleptic to sleep. 1* for me. Sorry not sorry.
aloyokon's review against another edition
5.0
A comprehensive overview of the Modern Olympics, from 1896 to 2016.
jo2's review against another edition
3.0
I learned a lot from reading it, but the book was not organized well. Also I got pretty fed up by the author's increasingly cynical attitude by the end.
bodagirl's review against another edition
Too academic on a subject I am only mildly interested. Attempted in January 2019.
allisonsbeautifullife's review against another edition
2.0
I love history and historical books, but this book wasn't exactly the history that I was expecting/hoping for. It was very detailed, but didn't really keep me interested. I would have liked more about the highlights that one would expect from a book about the olympics and a little bit less about the committees and the Baron de Coubertin!
llynn66's review
3.0
I am not one of those people who gets involved with sports. I don't watch Big Sports of any type (even living in this miraculous year in Cleveland.) Team sports hold no interest for me and I tend to be put off by the rabid partisanship of the crowds, the idolization of overgrown boys who can play what are basically children's games with skill and their out-of-proportion importance in our society. I am the first to grouse about the billions of dollars we pour into these entertainments which could, instead, be used on medical research, alternative energy sources, hunger and infrastructure. -- I am also thoroughly creeped out by the nationalism I see encroaching more and more into our world view. It was a bad idea eighty years ago and it remains a bad idea today.
Yet...I am a hypocrite. Because I have a soft spot for the hyped up, money hemorrhaging, nationalist circus that is the Olympic Games. Although I view their current underpinnings with suspicion and a bit of disgust, I enjoy the spectacle and the events, themselves. I have a long memory for some things and my Olympic memories extend back to Munich (that dismal and frightening Games, marred by the footage of armed terrorists and police on balconies in the Olympic Village.) I looked forward the the Olympics because we had to wait four years between them (which felt like an eternity to a child) and because they took place in various exotic locales around the globe. I was a child who was fascinated, from an early age, with other cultures and parts of the world. My life ambition was to be a 'world traveller' (a goal I met, mainly, through the television and my viewing of the Olympics and other documentaries about the world's treasures.)
I recall Olga Korbut, Marc Spitz, Dorothy Hamil, Bruce Jenner (long before Kaitlyn), Nadia Comaneci, Torvill and Dean, Carl Lewis, Sebastian Coe, Sugar Ray Leonard, the East German women's swimming team, the US hockey team 'miracle' of 1980, Greg Louganis, Mary Lou Retton, Katarina Witt, and on and on and on. I could write six more paragraphs about the memories I have being glued to the TV with my family watching our collective pop cultural sports history unfold throughout the latter part of the 20th century. -- As an adult, I have had less time to watch and I have been less happy with the coverage of the events. (Less depth of coverage, too much focus on American athletes and gold medalists and not enough attention paid to athletes from other regions and athletes who are deeper back in the medal field but who may have intriguing personal stories.)
So there is a lot for me to love but also a lot for me to wince about when it comes to this world wide ritual. -- As I read The Games, I had a clear impression that the author, David Goldblatt, has a similarly complex relationship with the Olympics. His commentary on the history of the Games was, at times, scathing. (I found him to be quite funny.) And I believe he almost wrote parts of this book as a cautionary tale. Fans may not be aware of how out-of-control the Olympics have become from a staging perspective. Very few cities in the world can actually afford to present them and to keep them relatively secure at this point. They have ballooned into a high maintenance White Elephant with champagne taste, which may not survive long into the 21st century if reforms and retooling do not take hold.
The Olympic Committee does not come off smelling like a rose in this narrative. They are, apparently, very much an Old Boys Club of insiders who enjoy luxury travel. (I don't know how you get this gig...but it sounds like a sweet deal to me...getting first class treatment for months at a time as one vets the sexiest world capitals on the globe. Nice work, if you can get it.) They have also been somewhat fossilized and very late to adapt to the changing world around them. Goldblatt saves a lot of his hilarious British sarcasm for this gang of grifters.
But we all like to look back on the highlight reel of our lives and these 'collective events' are growing more and more rare in a fragmented world where everyone has their own Youtube channel and Soundcloud mix. People no longer join community groups or social organizations (Bowling Alone) and fewer and fewer belong to organized religions. Gone is the group experience in most of our lives. Perhaps this is why we have become so relentlessly tribal in our sports fandom and our political affiliations. These remain the few areas in our lives where we feel part of a larger group of 'people like us'.
I enjoyed this overview of the Games because it did ignite some deeply buried memories I have as a spectator. I was also fascinated by the chapters on the early modern Games from the turn of the last century. (There is interesting video footage online of the London Games from 1908.) The Games provides an interesting overview of the modern Olympic Games from Athens in 1896 through an introduction to the Rio Games we just finished viewing this past summer. The Summer Games get more coverage in this book than the Winter Games, (which are described as somewhat of a step child to the Summer Games, at least initially. They seem to have gained in stature and popularity in more contemporary times. I have always enjoyed them equally, being fond of figure skating and skiing.)
I was hoping that the book would have a bit more depth about each Olympics. However, the scope here is to provide an overview of the history of the Games as a whole. Something more detailed would probably be encyclopedic in length. I do not feel this is a demerit. The Games was a solid and entertaining starting point. I am interested in the topic and will probably search for more titles about the various Olympics I remember watching over the years.
Yet...I am a hypocrite. Because I have a soft spot for the hyped up, money hemorrhaging, nationalist circus that is the Olympic Games. Although I view their current underpinnings with suspicion and a bit of disgust, I enjoy the spectacle and the events, themselves. I have a long memory for some things and my Olympic memories extend back to Munich (that dismal and frightening Games, marred by the footage of armed terrorists and police on balconies in the Olympic Village.) I looked forward the the Olympics because we had to wait four years between them (which felt like an eternity to a child) and because they took place in various exotic locales around the globe. I was a child who was fascinated, from an early age, with other cultures and parts of the world. My life ambition was to be a 'world traveller' (a goal I met, mainly, through the television and my viewing of the Olympics and other documentaries about the world's treasures.)
I recall Olga Korbut, Marc Spitz, Dorothy Hamil, Bruce Jenner (long before Kaitlyn), Nadia Comaneci, Torvill and Dean, Carl Lewis, Sebastian Coe, Sugar Ray Leonard, the East German women's swimming team, the US hockey team 'miracle' of 1980, Greg Louganis, Mary Lou Retton, Katarina Witt, and on and on and on. I could write six more paragraphs about the memories I have being glued to the TV with my family watching our collective pop cultural sports history unfold throughout the latter part of the 20th century. -- As an adult, I have had less time to watch and I have been less happy with the coverage of the events. (Less depth of coverage, too much focus on American athletes and gold medalists and not enough attention paid to athletes from other regions and athletes who are deeper back in the medal field but who may have intriguing personal stories.)
So there is a lot for me to love but also a lot for me to wince about when it comes to this world wide ritual. -- As I read The Games, I had a clear impression that the author, David Goldblatt, has a similarly complex relationship with the Olympics. His commentary on the history of the Games was, at times, scathing. (I found him to be quite funny.) And I believe he almost wrote parts of this book as a cautionary tale. Fans may not be aware of how out-of-control the Olympics have become from a staging perspective. Very few cities in the world can actually afford to present them and to keep them relatively secure at this point. They have ballooned into a high maintenance White Elephant with champagne taste, which may not survive long into the 21st century if reforms and retooling do not take hold.
The Olympic Committee does not come off smelling like a rose in this narrative. They are, apparently, very much an Old Boys Club of insiders who enjoy luxury travel. (I don't know how you get this gig...but it sounds like a sweet deal to me...getting first class treatment for months at a time as one vets the sexiest world capitals on the globe. Nice work, if you can get it.) They have also been somewhat fossilized and very late to adapt to the changing world around them. Goldblatt saves a lot of his hilarious British sarcasm for this gang of grifters.
But we all like to look back on the highlight reel of our lives and these 'collective events' are growing more and more rare in a fragmented world where everyone has their own Youtube channel and Soundcloud mix. People no longer join community groups or social organizations (Bowling Alone) and fewer and fewer belong to organized religions. Gone is the group experience in most of our lives. Perhaps this is why we have become so relentlessly tribal in our sports fandom and our political affiliations. These remain the few areas in our lives where we feel part of a larger group of 'people like us'.
I enjoyed this overview of the Games because it did ignite some deeply buried memories I have as a spectator. I was also fascinated by the chapters on the early modern Games from the turn of the last century. (There is interesting video footage online of the London Games from 1908.) The Games provides an interesting overview of the modern Olympic Games from Athens in 1896 through an introduction to the Rio Games we just finished viewing this past summer. The Summer Games get more coverage in this book than the Winter Games, (which are described as somewhat of a step child to the Summer Games, at least initially. They seem to have gained in stature and popularity in more contemporary times. I have always enjoyed them equally, being fond of figure skating and skiing.)
I was hoping that the book would have a bit more depth about each Olympics. However, the scope here is to provide an overview of the history of the Games as a whole. Something more detailed would probably be encyclopedic in length. I do not feel this is a demerit. The Games was a solid and entertaining starting point. I am interested in the topic and will probably search for more titles about the various Olympics I remember watching over the years.
merlin_55's review
2.0
Read on flight to Rio to get into the mood. A lot of focus on the politics behind the games, why cities were chosen. Would have preferred more about the actual games themselves.
gabbyhm's review
4.0
There's nothing like the Olympics to turn me into not only a wannabe athlete, but a person who bleeds red, white, and blue. So I decided to read David Goldblatt's The Games to get some perspective on the biennial sports fest. This book is a comprehensive overview of the modern Olympics, beginning with the first small-scale variety in 1896 in Athens, going through the lead-up to the grandiose 2016 Rio de Janiero Summer Games.
This book is packed with information, and I learned quite a lot by reading it about how the Olympics have grown and changed from their genesis as the dream of Pierre de Coubertin to display the best in white upper-class male sporting accomplishment to their gradual (and often reluctant) inclusion of women, people of color, and commoners. I was surprised by just how many of things I think of as hallmarks of the Olympics: mascots, the torch-lighting ceremonies, the Winter Games, the offsetting of the schedules between Winter and Summer so there are Olympics every two years, are relatively recent additions. And it's astonishing how low-budget they used to be until very recently, and how the ways that different governments have approached their infrastructure projects have created very disparate outcomes.
While Goldblatt does good work separating the modern Olympics into eras and providing a brief introductory chapter linking the themes that arched across all the Games in a particular era, there wasn't as much narrative flow as I tend to prefer in my nonfiction. It's not that his prose is clunky (indeed, it moves very well considering its fact-intensiveness), it's that he seems to be someone, at least in the way he wrote this book, who can't see the forest for the trees. His research was clearly rigorous, and it sometimes feels like he was so enthusiastic about sharing what he uncovered that he lets himself get bogged down by trying to fit in as much as possible. This made for slow reading, because I had a hard time going more than 15-20 pages before I felt like I needed a mental break, and that's not usually true for me, not even for nonfiction.
But if you're looking for a deep, well-structured resource for the history of the last 100ish years of the Olympics, this is the book for you. If you're looking for more information about the winter Games in particular, though, you might be disappointed...they began later and even today seemed to be popularly considered the lesser of the two, but Goldblatt pays them very short shrift indeed...I'd estimate the percentage of this book that deals with them to be 10% or less. Also, if you're looking for stories about the athletes themselves, by and large this won't be where you'll find it. It's mostly about the structures and logistics and international pressures that have grown and created and challenged the Olympics. If that's what you're into, you'll love it. And while it's a very competent book at what it's trying to do, I don't think I'd recommend it to a wide audience...it's too dense and specialized to have broad appeal.
This book is packed with information, and I learned quite a lot by reading it about how the Olympics have grown and changed from their genesis as the dream of Pierre de Coubertin to display the best in white upper-class male sporting accomplishment to their gradual (and often reluctant) inclusion of women, people of color, and commoners. I was surprised by just how many of things I think of as hallmarks of the Olympics: mascots, the torch-lighting ceremonies, the Winter Games, the offsetting of the schedules between Winter and Summer so there are Olympics every two years, are relatively recent additions. And it's astonishing how low-budget they used to be until very recently, and how the ways that different governments have approached their infrastructure projects have created very disparate outcomes.
While Goldblatt does good work separating the modern Olympics into eras and providing a brief introductory chapter linking the themes that arched across all the Games in a particular era, there wasn't as much narrative flow as I tend to prefer in my nonfiction. It's not that his prose is clunky (indeed, it moves very well considering its fact-intensiveness), it's that he seems to be someone, at least in the way he wrote this book, who can't see the forest for the trees. His research was clearly rigorous, and it sometimes feels like he was so enthusiastic about sharing what he uncovered that he lets himself get bogged down by trying to fit in as much as possible. This made for slow reading, because I had a hard time going more than 15-20 pages before I felt like I needed a mental break, and that's not usually true for me, not even for nonfiction.
But if you're looking for a deep, well-structured resource for the history of the last 100ish years of the Olympics, this is the book for you. If you're looking for more information about the winter Games in particular, though, you might be disappointed...they began later and even today seemed to be popularly considered the lesser of the two, but Goldblatt pays them very short shrift indeed...I'd estimate the percentage of this book that deals with them to be 10% or less. Also, if you're looking for stories about the athletes themselves, by and large this won't be where you'll find it. It's mostly about the structures and logistics and international pressures that have grown and created and challenged the Olympics. If that's what you're into, you'll love it. And while it's a very competent book at what it's trying to do, I don't think I'd recommend it to a wide audience...it's too dense and specialized to have broad appeal.
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