Triumph The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics

Houghton Mifflin. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 2007. Hardcover. 0618688226 . 1 x 8.3 x 5.7 Inches; 288 pages; In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers<BR>looming, an African-American son of sharecroppers set three world<BR>records and won an unprecedented four gold medals, single-handedly<BR>crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens<BR>at the 1936 Olympics Games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a<BR>performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex<BR>tale of the courage of one remarkable man.<BR><BR>Drawing on unprecedented access to the Owens family, previously<BR>unpublished interviews, and exhaustive archival research, Jeremy<BR>Schaap transports us to Nazi Germany to weave this dramatic tale.<BR>From the start, American participation in the games was controversial.<BR>A boycott, based on reports of Nazi hostility to Jews, was afoot, but it<BR>was thwarted by the president of the American Olympic Committee.<BR>At the games themselves the plots and intrigues continued: Owens was<BR>befriended by a German rival, broad jumper Luz Long, who helped<BR>Owens win the gold medal at his own expense. Two Jewish sprinters<BR>were, at the last moment, denied the chance to compete for the United<BR>States out of misguided politeness to the Nazi hosts. And a myth was<BR>born that Hitler himself had snubbed Owens.<BR><BR>Like Neal Bascomb's The Perfect Mile and David Margolick's<BR>Beyond Glory, Triumph captures this momentous episode in sports,<BR>and world, history in a nuanced yet page-turning narrative full of<BR>drama, suspense, and color. .