Just Do It

David Maraniss

by Shaun Brady

Thu., July 10, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org

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The run-up to this summer's Beijing Olympics has seen the torch's light dimmed by protests along its route. But as the debate rages over whether engaging with China will broaden the host country's horizons or simply valorize its abysmal record on human rights, along comes author David Maraniss with a bit of perspective: These will most likely not be the most politically charged Games of the modern era.

That honor dates back nearly a half-century, as Maraniss points out in Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World (Simon & Schuster, $26.95). The major undercurrent, predictably for a tale set in 1960, is the tension of the Cold War, played out brazenly in the propaganda battles between the U.S. and USSR, with cloak and dagger activities almost comprising a second, shadow games. The Civil Rights movement going on back in the States was a major propaganda target of the Soviets, one very consciously countered by an American team that included decathlete Rafer Johnson, track phenom Wilma Rudolph and a young boxer named Cassius Marcellus Clay, whose activities had yet to match his already awe-inspiring ego.

With previous books, Maraniss has ping-ponged between sports and politics, having tackled the lives of Vince Lombardi and Bill Clinton and penned a narrative of the Vietnam war. Rome 1960 interweaves those two threads with the agility of one of the gold-medal winners he profiles. His juggling of broad geopolitics with intimate personal stories is an impressively athletic undertaking.