Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World, by David Maraniss

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Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World, by David Maraniss

POSTED: Monday, June 30, 2008, 5:24 PM

Summer Games

Simon & Schuster, 479 pp., $26.9

David Maraniss’ Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World chronicles the Eternal City’s games on and off the field that hot summer, with the historical scope of Suetonius and the sweaty details of Dick Schaap.

Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter, punctures any exercise in nostalgia with an Olympian exposé of the global politics at play in a culturally pivotal time. He spikes any misty-eyed portraits of athletes with the realities of their lives and the nations they symbolize.

At the time, these athletes were required to maintain their amateur status, just trying to hang in for a date with Olympic destiny. Peerless sprinter Wilma Rudolf has to conceal that she was a mother at age 16 to secure her Olympic berth; and Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Marcellus Clay) was so terrified on the flight to Rome that he talked the whole way and couldn't even be knocked out with a sedative.

Titanic decathlete Rafer Johnson, who fought back from a career-ending injury, was to be the first black American to head the U.S. delegation and carry the flag at the opening ceremonies. The performances and the backgrounds of the top athletes from 80 nations are brilliantly framed by Maraniss’ consummate research and fleet prose.

Rome 1960 not only relives the ephemeral glory and mythic competition, it also delves into the geopolitical snake pit that engulfs the games. The oppressive backdrop to the Rome games was the Cold War, protesting Chinese delegations, South African Apartheid and even Vatican intrigue.

Idealistic athletic competition on the field is jeopardized by the scabrous political competition behind closed doors. The International Olympic Committee that year had to deal with Mao’s China, which withdrew from the Rome games because Taiwan’s Chiang Kaishek was sending a separate delegation, for instance. Meanwhile, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who privately despised sports, made it a propaganda boon for Cold War politics.

As the Beijing summer games are about to commence amid our current volatile global environment, Rome's themes resonate.

Maraniss’ good, bad and ugly history of the Olympic Movement dwells on the humanity of it all in pursuit of incorruptible excellence. His prosaic achievement has raised the bar in the field of sports literature and is one of the nonfiction titles of the year.

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