Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World.

Maraniss, David (author).

While many Summer Olympic Games have left their mark on our collective memory—Berlin 1932 and Munich 1972 are two—Maraniss makes the strong point that the 1960 Rome Games represented a convergence of forces whose impacts are still felt today: television (and the big money it brought), corporate sponsorship, performance-enhancing drugs, the rise of women athletes, among others, all played out amid the tensions of the cold war and the American civil rights movement. Maraniss, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for national reporting, delivers a compelling narrative, bringing together all of those forces, while also seamlessly profiling the major figures of the games, from Olympic officials to the coaches and, of course, the athletes themselves, who in 1960 included sprinter Wilma Rudolph, decath-
alete Rafer Johnson, and a young boxer from Louisville who was still known at that time as Cassius Clay. Though neatly coinciding with the 2008 Beijing Games, also a cauldron for sociopolitical issues, this is a fine stand-alone effort.