The Politics of the Olympic Games

Avery Brundage, President of the International Olympic Committee for 20 years, devoted his career to the Olympic ideal, the proposition that sports and politics do not mix. Espy's book is a chronicle of how they were mixed from the start, inevitably so in view of the facts of world affairs and the way in which the Games themselves were organized. The book is competently done but unfortunately does not have a modicum of the drama which the Games, and even some of the political issues, have provided.