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Author: Richard Hoffer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416593896
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
In the tradition of Seabiscuit and The Summer of ’49, a gripping sports narrative that brilliantly tells the amazing individual stories of the unforgettable athletes who gathered in Mexico City in a year of dramatic upheaval. The 1968 Mexico City Olympics reflected the spirit of their revolutionary times. Richard Hoffer’s Something in the Air captures the turbulence and offbeat heroism of that historic Olympiad, which was as rich in inspiring moments as it was drenched in political and racial tensions. Although the basketball star Lew Alcindor decided to boycott, heavyweight boxer George Foreman not only competed, but waved miniature American flags over his fallen opponents. The sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos became as famous for their raised-fist gestures of protest as their speed on the track. No one was prepared for Bob Beamon’s long jump, which broke the world’s record by a staggering twenty-two inches. And then there was Dick Fosbury, the goofball high jumper whose backwards, upside down approach to the bar (the "Fosbury Flop") baffled his coaches while breaking records. Though Fosbury was his own man, he was apolitical and easygoing. He didn’t defy authority; he defied gravity. Witty, insightful, and filled with human drama, Something in the Air mixes Shakespearean complexity with Hollywood sentimentality, sociopolitical significance, and the exhilarating spectacle of youthful, physical prowess. It is a powerful, unforgettable tale that will resonate with sports fans and readers of social history alike.
Author: Richard Hoffer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416593896
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Get Book Here
Book Description
In the tradition of Seabiscuit and The Summer of ’49, a gripping sports narrative that brilliantly tells the amazing individual stories of the unforgettable athletes who gathered in Mexico City in a year of dramatic upheaval. The 1968 Mexico City Olympics reflected the spirit of their revolutionary times. Richard Hoffer’s Something in the Air captures the turbulence and offbeat heroism of that historic Olympiad, which was as rich in inspiring moments as it was drenched in political and racial tensions. Although the basketball star Lew Alcindor decided to boycott, heavyweight boxer George Foreman not only competed, but waved miniature American flags over his fallen opponents. The sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos became as famous for their raised-fist gestures of protest as their speed on the track. No one was prepared for Bob Beamon’s long jump, which broke the world’s record by a staggering twenty-two inches. And then there was Dick Fosbury, the goofball high jumper whose backwards, upside down approach to the bar (the "Fosbury Flop") baffled his coaches while breaking records. Though Fosbury was his own man, he was apolitical and easygoing. He didn’t defy authority; he defied gravity. Witty, insightful, and filled with human drama, Something in the Air mixes Shakespearean complexity with Hollywood sentimentality, sociopolitical significance, and the exhilarating spectacle of youthful, physical prowess. It is a powerful, unforgettable tale that will resonate with sports fans and readers of social history alike.
Author: Heather L. Dichter
Publisher: Culture and Politics in the Company
ISBN: 9781625345950
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
During the Cold War, political tensions associated with the division of Germany came to influence the world of competitive sport. In the 1950s, West Germany and its NATO allies refused to recognize the communist East German state and barred its national teams from sporting competitions. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further exacerbated these pressures, with East German teams denied travel to several world championships. These tensions would only intensify in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics. In Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games, Heather L. Dichter considers how NATO and its member states used sport as a diplomatic arena during the height of the Cold War, and how international sport responded to political interference. Drawing on archival materials from NATO, foreign ministries, domestic and international sport functionaries, and newspapers, Dichter examines controversies surrounding the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, particularly the bidding process between countries to host the events. As she demonstrates, during the Cold War sport and politics became so intertwined that they had the power to fundamentally transform each other.
Author: Amy Bass
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452905723
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
Martin Luther King Jr., uprisings in American cities, student protests around the world, the rise of the Black Power movement, and decolonization and apartheid in Africa.".
Author: Douglas Hartmann
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226318567
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Ever since 1968 a single iconic image of race in American sport has remained indelibly etched on our collective memory: sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos accepting medals at the Mexico City Olympics with their black-gloved fists raised and heads bowed. But what inspired their protest? What happened after they stepped down from the podium? And how did their gesture impact racial inequalities? Drawing on extensive archival research and newly gathered oral histories, Douglas Hartmann sets out to answer these questions, reconsidering this pivotal event in the history of American sport. He places Smith and Carlos within the broader context of the civil rights movement and the controversial revolt of the black athlete. Although the movement drew widespread criticism, it also led to fundamental reforms in the organizational structure of American amateur athletics. Moving from historical narrative to cultural analysis, Hartmann explores what we can learn about the complex relations between race and sport in contemporary America from this episode and its aftermath.
Author: Axel Elías
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030741117
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
This book looks at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games as a complex nation-building project. Sports mega-events have been mostly studied as homogenous government-led strategies, but more work is needed around the diverse reception and performances. The preparation period for the Olympics in Mexico and especially the year 1968 highlight the multiplicity of voices behind these exercises. Beyond the government and associated networks, the citizenry also used this mega-event to present an idea of Mexico to the world and thus reshape citizenship and nationhood. This study takes a bottom-up approach to look at the citizenry’s experiences of the 1968 Olympic Games, both the shared nationalistic values and the areas of conflict.
Author: Harry Blutstein
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228006945
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
The year 1968 was ablaze with passion and mayhem as protests erupted in Paris and Prague, throughout the United States, and in cities on all continents. The Summer Olympic Games in Mexico were to be a moment of respite from chaos. But the image of peace – a white dove – adopted by organizers was an illusion, as was obvious to a record six hundred million people watching worldwide on satellite television. Ten days before the opening ceremony, soldiers slaughtered hundreds of student protesters in the capital. In Games of Discontent Harry Blutstein presents vivid accounts of threatened boycotts to protest racism in the United States, South Africa, and Rhodesia. He describes demonstrations by Czechoslovak gold medal gymnast Věra Čáslavská against the Soviet-led invasion of her country. The most dramatic moment of the Olympic Games was Tommie Smith and John Carlos's black power salute from the podium. Blutstein furnishes new details behind their protest and examines how this iconic image seared itself into historical memory, inspiring Colin Kaepernick and a new generation of athlete-activists to take a knee against racism decades later. The 1968 Summer Games became a microcosm of the discord happening around the globe. Describing a range of protest activities preceding and surrounding the 1968 Olympics, Games of Discontent shines light on the world during a politically transformative moment when discontents were able, for the first time, to globalize their protests.
Author: Jules Boykoff
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784780731
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
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.
Author: Luis M. Castañeda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816690763
Category : ARCHITECTURE
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In the wake of its early twentieth-century civil wars, Mexico strove to present itself to the world as unified and prosperous. The preparation in Mexico City for the 1968 Summer Olympics was arguably the most ambitious of a sequence of design projects that aimed to signal Mexico's arrival in the developed world. In Spectacular Mexico, Luis M. Castañeda demonstrates how these projects were used to create a spectacle of social harmony and ultimately to guide the nation's capital into becoming the powerful megacity we know today. Not only the first Latin American country to host the Olympics, but also the first Spanish-speaking country, Mexico's architectural transformation was put on international display. From traveling exhibitions of indigenous archaeological artifacts to the construction of the Mexico City subway, Spectacular Mexico details how these key projects placed the nation on the stage of global capitalism and revamped its status as a modernized country. Surveying works of major architects such as Félix Candela, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Ricardo Legorreta, and graphic designer Lance Wyman, Castañeda illustrates the use of architecture and design as instruments of propaganda and nation branding. Forming a kind of "image economy," Mexico's architectural projects and artifacts were at the heart of the nation's economic growth and cultivated a new mass audience at an international level. Through an examination of one of the most important cosmopolitan moments in Mexico's history, Spectacular Mexico positions architecture as central to the negotiation of social, economic, and political relations.
Author: Erin Elizabeth Redihan
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476627282
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
For Olympic athletes, fans and the media alike, the games bring out the best sport has to offer--unity, patriotism, friendly competition and the potential for stunning upsets. Yet wherever international competition occurs, politics are never far removed. Early in the Cold War, when all U.S.-Soviet interactions were treated as potential matters of life and death, each side tried to manipulate the International Olympic Committee. Despite the IOC's efforts to keep the games apolitical, they were quickly drawn into the superpowers' global struggle for supremacy, with medal counts the ultimate prize. Based on IOC, U.S. government and contemporary media sources, this book looks at six consecutive Olympiads to show how high the stakes became once the Soviets began competing in 1952, threatening America's athletic supremacy.
Author: Dave Zirin
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608461335
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 159
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Book Description
“A powerful and poignant memoir” of an African American athlete who defied the establishment—decades before Colin Kaepernick (Cornel West, New York Times–bestselling author of Race Matters). An NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work—Biography/Autobiography John Carlos was a bronze medalist in the two hundred-meter race at the 1968 Olympics, but he is remembered for more than his athletic accomplishments. His and his fellow medalist’s Tommie Smith’s Black Power salutes on the podium sparked controversy and career fallout—yet their show of defiance, seen around the world, remains one of the most iconic images of both Olympic history and African American history. This is the remarkable story of John Carlos’s experience as a young man in Harlem, a track and field athlete, and lifelong activist. “This book is fascinating for more than just the sports history, as the text talks about Carlos’ connection to Dr. King, basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Olympic runner Ralph Boston, baseball legend Jackie Robinson and boxer George Foreman. Carlos even comments on topics in today’s news including First Lady Michelle Obama, the value of Twitter, the antics of athletes like Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens, and his views on an award he received at ESPN’s 2008 ESPYs.” —Chicago Tribune “John Carlos is an American hero . . . I couldn’t put this book down.” —Michael Moore, filmmaker and New York Times–bestselling author of Here Comes Trouble
