Capture The Games: A Global History Of The Olympics Generated By David Goldblatt Shown As Script

academic on a subject I am only mildly interested, Attempted in January. Starting inwith Athens the Olympics were revived and everyyears the event gets bigger, the staging more elaborate and more athletes compete,

Why I started this book: I love watching the Olympics and basically spend two weeks glued to the TV, I was eager to learn more about the Olympics and get some insights into the background, behind the scenes stuff,

Why I finished it: First of all, the audio was a little confusing as Goldblatt would groupof the cities together and talk about a theme or issue starting with the first games in the group and then moving forward.
He would then jump back and pick another thread for that group and follow it, I bet the physical book had markers or sections and it was easy to understand but it took me a while to figure it out.

Crazy to consider the changes that the Olympics have gone through in justyears, From all white males, to embracing the world, both genders, disabled and proathletes, its been a wild ride, And if the games don't live up to their ideals its still a fabulous show, A little timely reading. I liked the book, but I expected more sports talk, frankly, The book is a pretty broad overview of the history of the games, but tends to focus more on the host cities and staging the game and less on the sports.
Which is to say, significant historic Olympians get named checked, but the sports themselves are mostly relegated to a few paragraphs

So, I've been kind of obsessed with the Olympics since a school project I did in middle school around the time of thewinter games.
I realize as an adult that a lot of what makes the games compelling is the carefully constructed image we're presented by the media.
And still, the last two weeks, I've been basically glued to my TV,

In fact, I've been consuming Olympicsrelated media like it's breakfast cereal for the last few weeks, so there was a lot in this book I already knewHitler created a lot of the ceremonial stuff we associate with the Olympics, like the torch relay and the bombastic opening ceremony the IOC is rife with corruption hosting the Olympics is becoming increasingly untenablebut there was some interesting information, too.
The IOC has pretty much always been corrupt, The end of the amateur requirement in the Olympics was probably a good thing, despite the modern Olympics' founders intentions, because it allowed athletes to make a living at their sports.
Doping and gender testing! has been an issue as far back as thes,

The book does not end optimistically, but it's hard to fault the conclusion, The increasing cost of staging the games and I learned from a documentary I watched a couple of weeks ago IOC members demanding perks and kickbacks mean that fewer cities are even going to bid on the Game.
Protest of the games also tends to deter the IOC, and Western cities bidding on the games have been full of protest the last few years.
Thus we end up with Olympics in countries with authoritarian governments, All the better to keep protestors at bay, not for nothing, Which is problematic, because the games then support states like Russia and China, tacitly supporting their human rights abuses, among other things,

Actually, Bill Simmons joked on his show last week that we should just have the Olympics rotate between London, LA, and Tokyo, and that's actually something I've seen others argue.
Designating one or a few rotating host cities basically stops city officials from bribing the IOC to win hosting bids, and would significantly decrease the mounting cost of building new infrastructure to host the games, since presumably the venues would all already exist.


Anyway. Interesting read. Not a lot of depth, but if you want a good overview on how the modern games came about, how they've developed over the years, and what their future might be, it's worth a read.
I enjoyed the author's wry tone his criticism can be biting, but there's a winky sarcasm to some of his arguments, too, Written by David Goldblatt, a British sports historian, "The Games" is a onevolume history of the modern Olympics,

Goldblatt's history is a comprehensive one that unfolds in a generally linear manner in which each section usually covers a particular decade.
The overarching emphasis is on the organizational history and development of the Olympic movement and the movement's attempts to grapple with broad social forces, such as the rise of women's athletics and the increasing commercialization of sports.
As a result, Goldblatt pays comparatively little attention to the individual athletic results achieved at specific games, For example, the discussion on theTokyo games focuses mainly on the ways in which the games were used to catalyze the city's and the larger country's reconstruction following World War II.


The story Goldblatt ultimately tells is how the idiosyncratic even for the time ideas of athcentury French aristocratic who viewed sports as an amateurish endeavor involving people drawn from the proper classes evolved into a global celebration of capitalism.
Over the years, the Olympic movement has survived a number of neardeath experiencessome of which were outside of its control e, g. , world wars, others of its own making e, g. , corruption scandals, exploding costs for host citiesand has adjusted to stay relevant to changing social trends,

Goldblatt's book is richly researched and is a relatively straightforward read, For instance, Goldblatt has not a single positive thing to say about theAtlanta games, and the chapter devoted to that Olympiad is delightfully scathing, in part because the author has no patience for the "New South" rhetoric long peddled by the city's civic leaders.
Goldblatt actually has relatively little positive to say about any of the games ever held in the United States,

At the same time, it is often not quite clear why Goldblatt devotes more attention to some Olympics more than others, Additionally, the Winter Olympics receive scant attention, with a few exceptions like theSalt Lake City games, which were marred by a corruption scandal.
Lastly, while not the author's fault, the The Games's production values are rather low, ranging from the relatively cheap paper used in what is a relatively expensive hardcover edition to frequent errors in typography.


Overall, I enjoyed "The Games" and found it an interesting, quick read, And it does identify many of the key themes that have defined the Olympics movement over the decades, Yet the book may not be for everyone, Those more interested in the actual athletic accomplishments may not like the stress on institutional history, while those interested in institutional history may find the coverage too superficial.
That said, the book does function nicely as an accessible, current, onevolume history of the games, Missing the excitement of TokyoDavid Goldblatts The Games is certainly no substitute for the event itself, but if you at all interested in the intersection of sports, culture, and politics represented by the Olympic Movement, then this just might adequately tide you over until next summer.


Goldblatt, mainly known for his work writing on soccer, offers incisive analysis which downplays what could very easily have been mere summary of results or endless iterations of worn cliches such as the “gifts” of athletic prowess or “winners and losers” narratives which plague the genre and which refuse to see sports as embedded in larger historical contexts.
He takes the modern Olympics seriously as a cultural product, one loosely rooted in visions of the ancient games of the distant past, but far more firmly in ideas which were current during the Victorian Era such as the games ethic and the equating of athleticism with moral virtue.
Interesting anecdotes abound. Were told, for example, how Pierre de Coubertin, who contributed so much to the revival of the Games, rewrote his life story to make himself appear as a lifelong Hellenophile when, in reality, hed visited Olympia only twice and had strained relationships with Greek nationalists who were intent on having a larger sway over the future of

the movement and who did not take kindly to Coubertins internationalist appropriation of the Games.
While this discussion could easily become overly moralizing, Goldblatt is able to handle the difficult balance between bringing clarity to an issue, while also maintaining a steady narrative pace.


From here, Goldblatt moves through the Games themselves, Notably, excepting the controversial Vancouver, the Winter Games receive short shrift, but, at over five hundred pages, it is easy to see why, In his scathing critique of Atlanta, Goldblatt observes “Atlanta was not the first Olympic city to declare war on its homeless citizens or to try to hide its shack cities” but these efforts shocked the organizers themselves who were “amazed and alarmed to discover the depopulated parts of downtown were a desert, deliberately engineered to lack shade, entirely bereft of water fountains.
” This is mixed in with more commonlydiscussed materials such as Centennial Park bombings and the recordbreaking feats of Michael Johnson in theandmeters.


Overall, The Games makes for rewarding reading for those interested in a more thorough, serious perspective,

Highly Recommended.