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Author: Phil Cousineau
Publisher: Quest Books
ISBN: 0835630773
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
This book was purchased by the US Olympic Committee and given to each member of the US Olympic Team of the Summer 2004 Games as well as those participating in the Special Olympics. Nothing draws people together quite like sports. This book explores exactly why that is. In anticipation of the nostalgic return of the Games to Greece in 2004, mythologist and life-long athlete Phil Cousineau has produced a work that, unlike other titles on the subject, delves deeply into the spiritual dimension of the Olympics and potentially all athletic activity. Reaching far back to the mythic and historic origins of the Games nearly 3,000 years ago, Cousineau examines the driving motivation behind these first ancient gatherings, which was peaceful competition in an atmosphere of fair play and brotherhood, as well as the pursuit of excellence in mind, body, and spirit. And following through to the present day, he describes how these same ideals still compel coaches, athletes, and fans to sports arenas today, despite obstacles with doping and bribery we occasionally find in the modern Games. A collector’s dream, this book contains ancient and contemporary illustrations, historic facts, anecdotes, famous quotes, and interviews with Olympic athletes, including three-time medalist Sarunas Marciulionis of Lithuania and legendary swimmer Matt Biondi. Also featured are excerpts from Cousineau’s interviews about the cultural role of sports with mythologist Joseph Campbell and religious historian Huston Smith. The Olympic Odyssey is written for all fans of the game of life who esteem true leadership, aspire to personal wholeness, and seriously question the cultural obsession with winning at all costs. Ultimately, it suggests the deepest reason we so love great athletes is for how they encourage us to achieve the highest level of being possible in our own lives, no matter what the arena in which we play.
Author: Phil Cousineau
Publisher: Quest Books
ISBN: 0835630773
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book was purchased by the US Olympic Committee and given to each member of the US Olympic Team of the Summer 2004 Games as well as those participating in the Special Olympics. Nothing draws people together quite like sports. This book explores exactly why that is. In anticipation of the nostalgic return of the Games to Greece in 2004, mythologist and life-long athlete Phil Cousineau has produced a work that, unlike other titles on the subject, delves deeply into the spiritual dimension of the Olympics and potentially all athletic activity. Reaching far back to the mythic and historic origins of the Games nearly 3,000 years ago, Cousineau examines the driving motivation behind these first ancient gatherings, which was peaceful competition in an atmosphere of fair play and brotherhood, as well as the pursuit of excellence in mind, body, and spirit. And following through to the present day, he describes how these same ideals still compel coaches, athletes, and fans to sports arenas today, despite obstacles with doping and bribery we occasionally find in the modern Games. A collector’s dream, this book contains ancient and contemporary illustrations, historic facts, anecdotes, famous quotes, and interviews with Olympic athletes, including three-time medalist Sarunas Marciulionis of Lithuania and legendary swimmer Matt Biondi. Also featured are excerpts from Cousineau’s interviews about the cultural role of sports with mythologist Joseph Campbell and religious historian Huston Smith. The Olympic Odyssey is written for all fans of the game of life who esteem true leadership, aspire to personal wholeness, and seriously question the cultural obsession with winning at all costs. Ultimately, it suggests the deepest reason we so love great athletes is for how they encourage us to achieve the highest level of being possible in our own lives, no matter what the arena in which we play.
Author: Tony Perrottet
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 081296991X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
What was it like to attend the ancient Olympic Games? With the summer Olympics’ return to Athens, Tony Perrottet delves into the ancient world and lets the Greek Games begin again. The acclaimed author of Pagan Holiday brings attitude, erudition, and humor to the fascinating story of the original Olympic festival, tracking the event day by day to re-create the experience in all its compelling spectacle. Using firsthand reports and little-known sources—including an actual Handbook for a Sports Coach used by the Greeks—The Naked Olympics creates a vivid picture of an extravaganza performed before as many as forty thousand people, featuring contests as timeless as the javelin throw and as exotic as the chariot race. Peeling away the layers of myth, Perrottet lays bare the ancient sporting experience—including the round-the-clock bacchanal inside the tents of the Olympic Village, the all-male nude workouts under the statue of Eros, and history’s first corruption scandals involving athletes. Featuring sometimes scandalous cameos by sports enthusiasts Plato, Socrates, and Herodotus, The Naked Olympics offers essential insight into today’s Games and an unforgettable guide to the world’s first and most influential athletic festival. "Just in time for the modern Olympic games to return to Greece this summer for the first time in more than a century, Tony Perrottet offers up a diverting primer on the Olympics of the ancient kind….Well researched; his sources are as solid as sources come. It's also well writen….Perhaps no book of the season will show us so briefly and entertainingly just how complete is our inheritance from the Greeks, vulgarity and all." --The Washington Post
Author: Heidi Neale
Publisher: LABRYS
ISBN: 9780965977814
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Two Olympians, tormented by visions of nuclear destruction, unite with the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece in a quest to save the Olympic Games from a terrorist threat. However, the once-almighty immortals find themselves in a reality vastly different from the one they remember, and radically different from the one we know. Zeus no longer holds dominion over the wide heavens, and Athena and Aphrodite have reclaimed their stature as equal partners changes brought about by the transformation of human consciousness that swept the globe when the Minoan Message was received at the turn of the Millennium. In this new reality, gender equality, social justice and sustainability are cultural norms, and human society has matured into the first global democracy on Planet Earth. Yet, it is all at risk.& ;The immortals, together with the mortal heroes, Greek-American decathlete, Herakles Speros, and Caribbean sprinter, Alanta January, must unite to stop Ares, the god of war, whose terrorist henchmen would use the power of the atom to destroy the peace. As the athletes prepare for their Olympic competitions, and Eros ignites their hearts with love, they are fatefully swept into the mythic drama. From the depths of Hades to the summit of Mount Olympus, they must successfully navigate the realm of dreams and visions if they are to fulfill their destiny of saving the Games.
Author: Jilly Traganou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317226356
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Designing the Olympics claims that the Olympic Games provide opportunities to reflect on the relationship between design, national identity, and citizenship. The "Olympic design milieu" fans out from the construction of the Olympic city and the creation of emblems, mascots, and ceremonies, to the consumption, interpretation, and appropriation of Olympic artifacts from their conception to their afterlife. Besides products that try to achieve consensus and induce civic pride, the "Olympic design milieu" also includes processes that oppose the Olympics and their enforcement. The book examines the graphic design program for Tokyo 1964, architecture and urban plans for Athens 2004, brand design for London 2012, and practices of subversive appropriation and sociotechnical action in counter-Olympic movements since the 1960s. It explores how the Olympics shape the physical, legal and emotional contours of a host nation and its position in the world; how the Games are contested by a broader social spectrum within and beyond the nation; and how, throughout these encounters, design plays a crucial role. Recognizing the presence of multiple actors, the book investigates the potential of design in promoting equitable political participation in the Olympic context.
Author: Jules Boykoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135938261
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
The Olympic Games have become the world’s greatest media and marketing event—a global celebration of exceptional athletics gilded with corporate cash. Huge corporations vie for association with the "Olympic Image" in the hope of gaining a worldwide marketing audience of billions. In this provocative critical study of the contemporary Olympics, Jules Boykoff argues that the Games have become a massive planned economy designed to shield the rich from risk while providing them with a spectacle to treasure. Placing political economy at the center of the analysis, and drawing on interdisciplinary research in sociology, politics, geography, history, and economics, Boykoff develops an innovative theory of "celebration capitalism", the manipulation of state actors as partners that drives us towards public–private partnerships in which the public pays and the private profits. He argues that the Athens Games in 2004 marked the full emergence of celebration capitalism, with London 2012 representing its quintessential expression, characterized by a state of exception, unfettered commercialism, repression of dissent, questionable sustainability claims, and the complicity of the mainstream media. Controversial, challenging, and forthright, this book opens up a fascinating new avenue for understanding the contemporary Olympics in the context of global capitalist society. It is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the Olympic Games, the relationship between sport and society, or global politics and culture.
Author: Sean Gammon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351563807
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
The Olympic Games have evolved into the most prestigious sport event on the planet. As a consequence, each Games generates more and more interest from the academic community. Sociology, politics, geography and history have all played a part in helping to understand the meanings and implications of the Games. Heritage, too, offers invaluable insights into what we value about the Games, and what we would like to pass on to future generations. Each Olympic Games unquestionably represents key life-markers to a broad audience across the world, and the great events that take place within them become worthy of remembrance, celebration and protection. The more tangible heritage features are also evident; from the myriad artefacts and ephemera found in museums to the celebratory symbolism of past Olympic venues and sites that have become visitor attractions in their own right. This edited collection offers detailed and thought-provoking examples of these heritage components, and illustrates powerfully the breadth, passion and cultural significance that the Olympics engender.This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.
Author: Stephen Gaylord Miller
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300115291
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
Presenting a survey of sports in ancient Greece, this work describes ancient sporting events and games. It considers the role of women and amateurs in ancient athletics, and explores the impact of these games on art, literature and politics.
Author: Janie Hampton
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA
ISBN: 1781310017
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
‘An enthralling account.’ —Independent ‘A fascinating book … researched with an awesome thoroughness.’ —Daily Telegraph ‘Hampton’s excellent book should be compulsory reading for everyone involved in the 2012 London Olympics.’ —Daily Mail Critic’s Choice The budget for the 2012 Olympic village alone is already a billion pounds short. The likelihood of corporate sponsorship recedes with every day of the credit crunch. How on earth are we going to match the opening and closing ceremonies of Beijing, let along top them? Fortunately, London has been through just such hard times before in the run-up to an Olympics, and in 1948 it showed just how to run a fantastic Games on a tiny budget – indeed, make them all the better for it. Janie Hampton’s book about the last time the Olympics came to London is a tale of female competitors sewing their own kit, teams ferried to the Games on red London buses and billeted in Spartan hostels or even army camps, and the main stadium being hastily cleared of greyhound racing to allow the athletics to take place. The total budget was £760,000, great athletes like Emil Zatopek and Fanny Blankers-Koen thrilled the crowds, and at the end a profit was turned! This is a book that becomes more relevant and ironically entertaining every day nearer to 2012.
Author: James C. Cobb
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820335096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
Georgia Odyssey is a lively survey of the state’s history, from its beginnings as a European colony to its current standing as an international business mecca, from the self-imposed isolation of its Jim Crow era to its role as host of the centennial Olympic Games and beyond, from its long reign as the linchpin state of the Democratic Solid South to its current dominance by the Republican Party. This new edition incorporates current trends that have placed Georgia among the country’s most dynamic and attractive states, fueled the growth of its Hispanic and Asian American populations, and otherwise dramatically altered its demographic, economic, social, and cultural appearance and persona. “The constantly shifting cultural landscape of contemporary Georgia,” writes James C. Cobb, “presents a jumbled panorama of anachronism, contradiction, contrast, and peculiarity.” A Georgia native, Cobb delights in debunking familiar myths about his state as he brings its past to life and makes it relevant to today. Not all of that past is pleasant to recall, Cobb notes. Moreover, not all of today’s Georgians are as unequivocal as the tobacco farmer who informed a visiting journalist in 1938 that “we Georgians are Georgian as hell.” That said, a great many Georgians, both natives and new arrivals, care deeply about the state’s identity and consider it integral to their own. Georgia Odyssey is the ideal introduction to our past and a unique and often provocative look at the interaction of that past with our present and future.
Author: Allen Guttmann
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252070464
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
Traces the history of the modern Olympics from 1896 to 2000, contrasting the ideal of the game with the often politicized reality.
