Top 10 Must-Read Books About the Olympics

You can’t find a more definitive history on the Olympics than David Goldblatt’s The Games, which traces the modern sporting event from Athens in 1896 to Rio in 2016. Goldblatt expertly explores the social and political history of the Olympics, and details the origins of traditions like awarding medals to winners and spotlighting larger-than-life athletes who have competed at the Games throughout the decades.

In the brand-new The Other Olympians, Michael Waters dives into the forgotten stories of pioneering trans and intersex athletes in the 1930s. “This started from an ongoing interest in queer history,” Waters told Outsports. “What is always wild to me about looking at the arc of queerness anywhere is that you can find these moments of community and visible queerness in different ways in these eras before the traditional narratives.”

The title of Vicki Valosik’s mesmerizing new history of synchronized swimming comes from a quote from Esther Williams, the “godmother” of the sport: “If you’re not strong enough to swim fast, you’re probably not strong enough to swim ‘pretty.'” Valosik, herself a competitive synchronized swimmer, traces the origins of aquatic performance, from vaudeville stages to the Olympics.

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany, an unexpected men’s rowing team from the University of Washington triumphed over the Germans. Daniel James Brown’s book follows the nine men on the team, who came from lower-middle-class families, and their eventual Olympic win. Bonus: The book is now a film directed by George Clooney and starring Callum Turner, Joel Edgerton, and more. (You can watch here.)

Jules Boykoff, a political scientist who formerly competed for Team USA in men’s soccer, has authored numerous books on the anti-Olympic movement and the failings of the Olympic Games. Power Games is a “no-holds barred” critical history of the modern competition. “The Olympics are very popular, as long as they’re not happening in your city,” he said. “While the Olympics tend to bring out the very best in athletes, they also tend to bring out the very worst in host cities.”

Black American sprinter Jesse Owens’s achievements at the 1936 Berlin Olympics made history: His four gold medals were a direct rebuke to Hitler and Nazi Germany. In Triumph, Owens’s remarkable journey to the Games is told in vivid detail—author Jeremy Schaap draws on previously unpublished interviews, plus new access to Owens’s family. “Nothing Jesse Owens did at the Olympic stadium diminished the horrors to come. He saved no lives. However, for those paying close enough attention, Owens, in Berlin, revealed essential truths,” Schaap writes in the introduction. “While western democracies were perfecting the art of appeasement, while much of the rest of the world kowtowed to the Nazis, Owens stood up to them at their own Olympics, refuting their venomous theories with his awesome deeds.”

Timed to the Paris Olympics, Assouline released a gorgeous coffee table book that celebrates 100 significant moments in Summer Olympics history. “From Berlin to Munich, Melbourne to Beijing, the Olympic Games have never escaped the world’s imperfections but have frequently carried their dreams forward. In this manner, the Games have always been linked to their time and represent modernity,” co-author Étienna Bonamy tells T&C.

In 1960, the all-Black women’s track team at Tennessee State University, called the Tigerbelles, made their mark on Olympic history when they went on to win 23 !!) medals at the Rome Games. As author Aime Alley Card writes, their performance was a “moment when the world was forced to sit up and acknowledge that women can run.” Also check out Tigerbelle: The Wyomia Tyus Story, a memoir by Tyus.

One of the biggest Winter Olympic stories of the last century was, of course, the 1980 “Miracle on Ice,” when the U.S. hockey team triumphed over the Soviet Union in Lake Placid. (The name comes from announcer Al Michaels, who declared on the ABC broadcast, “Do you believe in miracles? YES!”) The Soviet team was made of professional hockey players, but the U.S. team was comprised of blue-collar workers, mainly amateurs. Wayne Coffey’s book tells the story of the hockey team’s incredible run.

At the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, the U.S. men’s basketball team was nicknamed the “Dream Team”—comprised of stars including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum was there for their entire run—and his book, Dream Team, chronicles the “moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together and changed the future of sports.”