Reading for Rio
New books tell Olympic stories
If you’ve been glued to the Games this week, it’s understandable — we’ve all logged plenty of TV time watching the Olympics. But if NBC’s 7,600 hours of swimming, sprinting and gymnastics on the tube aren’t enough, you can dive deeper. Publishers have rolled out plenty of Olympics-themed books this summer, from comprehensive histories to athlete memoirs. When Rio’s in our rearview mirror, we’ll gear up for the inevitable batch of books about the benefits of cupping. But here are some of the most promising Olympic reads available now:
THE GAMES: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF THE OLYMPICS
By David Goldblatt W.W. Norton & Co., 528 pp., $29.95
This book offers a full examination of Olympic history, from the 1896 Athens games to this year’s spectacle in Rio. Goldblatt explains how the Games have been inextricably connected to world events, from the massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972 to the Paralympic Games, which were inspired by soldiers wounded in World War II.
THE END OF THE PERFECT 10
By Dvora Meyers Touchstone, 336 pp., $26
After controversy over scoring in the 2004 Olympics, elite gymnastics abandoned the 10-point scale and switched to an open-ended scoring system. But even if gymnasts can no longer strive for a “perfect” 10.0 score, the competition is getting more difficult and more elite. This book examines the evolution of women’s gymnastics and looks ahead to Olympic contests in the future.
MAKING WAVES: MY JOURNEY TO WINNING OLYMPIC GOLD AND DEFEATING THE EAST GERMAN DOPING PROGRAM
By Shirley Babashoff with Chris Epting Santa Monica Press, 272 pp., $24.95
Swimmer Shirley Babashoff set 39 American records and 11 world records in her career, and in the 1976 Games she was poised to become “the female Mark Spitz.” But when she voiced her suspicion that the East German women’s swimming team was doping, she was vilified and accused of poor sportsmanship. Forty years later, the gold medalist tells her version of the story.
CHASING WATER: ELEGY OF AN OLYMPIAN
By Anthony Ervin and Constantine Markides Edge of Sports, 300 pp., $15.95 Anthony Ervin won gold at the 2000 Olympic Games, then auctioned off his medal for charity and retired from swimming in his early 20s. He set off on what’s been described as “part spiritual quest, part self-destructive bender,” then returned to compete in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. Here, he tells his story with help from journalist and swim trainer Constantine Markides.
DON’T TELL ME YOU’RE AFRAID
By Giuseppe Catozzella Penguin, 256 pp., $25
Translated from Italian, this is the fictionalized story of Samia Yusuf Omar, a young Somali woman who was born to be a runner. She wore handme-down shoes, trained in secret and represented her country with an inspiring run in the 2008 Olympics. When life becomes unbearable in Somalia, she tries to immigrate to Europe to train for the 2012 Games. Then tragedy strikes.