Book picks similar to
Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games by David Clay Large
history
sports
olympics
germany
The Borgias: The Hidden History
G.J. Meyer - 2013
Epic in scope and set against the beautifully rendered backdrop of Renaissance Italy, The Borgias is a thrilling new depiction of these celebrated personalities and an era unsurpassed in beauty, terror, and intrigue.
Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians
Noam Chomsky - 1982
Chomsky examines the origins of this relationship and its meaningful consequences for the Palestinians and other Arabs. The book mainly concentrates on the 1982 Lebanon War and the "pro-Zionist" bias of most U.S. media and intellectuals, as Chomsky puts it.
A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America
Philip Rucker - 2020
They peer deeply into Trump's White House – at the aides pressured to lie to the public, the lawyers scrambling to clear up norm-breaking disasters, and the staffers whose careers have been reduced to ashes – to paint an unparalleled group portrait of an administration driven by self-preservation and paranoia. Rucker and Leonnig reveal Trump at his most unvarnished, showing the unhinged decision-making and incompetence that has floored officials and stunned foreign leaders. They portray unscripted calls with Vladimir Putin, steak dinners with Kim Jong-un, and calls with Theresa May so hostile that they left her aides shaken. They also take a hard look at Robert Mueller, Trump's greatest antagonist to date, and how his investigation slowly unravelled an administration whose universal value is loyalty – not to country, but to the president himself.
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book
Peter Finn - 2014
He left carrying the original manuscript of Pasternak’s first and only novel, entrusted to him with these words: “This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world.” Pasternak believed his novel was unlikely ever to be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an irredeemable assault on the 1917 Revolution. But he thought it stood a chance in the West and, indeed, beginning in Italy, Doctor Zhivago was widely published in translation throughout the world. From there the life of this extraordinary book entered the realm of the spy novel. The CIA, which recognized that the Cold War was above all an ideological battle, published a Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. Copies were devoured in Moscow and Leningrad, sold on the black market, and passed surreptitiously from friend to friend. Pasternak’s funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands of admirers who defied their government to bid him farewell. The example he set launched the great tradition of the writer-dissident in the Soviet Union. In The Zhivago Affair, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée bring us intimately close to this charming, passionate, and complex artist. First to obtain CIA files providing concrete proof of the agency’s involvement, the authors give us a literary thriller that takes us back to a fascinating period of the Cold War—to a time when literature had the power to stir the world.(With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
Peter Pomerantsev - 2014
It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West.When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system.Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
William L. Shirer - 1960
It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading
At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War
Thomas Reed - 2004
presidents to outmaneuver the Russians, the Vietnam war, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Original.
Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth
Iain MacGregor - 2019
In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempt to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it. In 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world’s media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signaled the end of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie had been the epicenter of global conflict for nearly three decades. Now, “in capturing the essence of the old Cold War [MacGregor] may just have helped us to understand a bit more about the new one” (The Times, London)—the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the world throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as Eisenhower, Stalin, JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedung, Nixon, Reagan, and other politicians of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; children who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost loved ones trying to escape over it; military policemen and soldiers who guarded the checkpoints; CIA, MI6, and Stasi operatives who oversaw operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie.
The Secret Olympian: The inside story of the Olympic experience
Anonymous - 2005
Here, for the first time, in all its shocking, funny and downright bizarre glory, is the truth of the Olympic experience.It is an unimaginable world: the kitting-out ceremony with its 35kg of team clothing per athletethe pre-Olympic holding camp with its practical jokes, resentment and fighting, and freaky physiological regimesthe politicians' visits with their flirty spousesthe vast range of athletes with their odd body shapes and freakish geneticsthe release post-competion in the Olympic village with all the excessive drinking, eating, partying and sex (not necessarily in that order)the hysteria of homecoming celebrations and the comedown that follows - how do you adjust to life after the Games?The Secret Olympian talks to scores of Olympic athletes - past and present, from Munich 1960 right through to London 2012, including British, American, Australian, Dutch, French, Croatian, German, Canadian and Italian competitors. They all have a tale to tell - and most of those tales would make your eyes pop more than an Olympic weightlifter's.
Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel
Dan Ephron - 2015
Killing a King relates the parallel stories of Rabin and his stalker, Yigal Amir, over the two years leading up to the assassination, as one of them planned political deals he hoped would lead to peace, and the other plotted murder.Dan Ephron, who reported from the Middle East for much of the past two decades, covered both the rally where Rabin was killed and the subsequent murder trial. He describes how Rabin, a former general who led the army in the Six-Day War of 1967, embraced his nemesis, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, and set about trying to resolve the twentieth century’s most vexing conflict. He recounts in agonizing detail how extremists on both sides undermined the peace process with ghastly violence. And he reconstructs the relentless scheming of Amir, a twenty-five-year-old law student and Jewish extremist who believed that Rabin’s peace effort amounted to a betrayal of Israel and the Jewish people. As Amir stalked Rabin over many months, the agency charged with safeguarding the Israeli leader missed key clues, overlooked intelligence reports, and then failed to protect him at the critical moment, exactly twenty years ago. It was the biggest security blunder in the agency’s history.Through the prism of the assassination, much about Israel today comes into focus, from the paralysis in peacemaking to the fraught relationship between current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama. Based on Israeli police reports, interviews, confessions, and the cooperation of both Rabin’s and Amir’s families, Killing a King is a tightly coiled narrative that reaches an inevitable, shattering conclusion. One can’t help but wonder what Israel would look like today had Rabin lived.
Son of Hamas
Mosab Hassan Yousef - 2010
The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status . . . and power. But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence, and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader. In Son of Hamas, Mosab Yousef—now called “Joseph”—reveals new information about the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization and unveils the truth about his own role, his agonizing separation from family and homeland, the dangerous decision to make his newfound faith public, and his belief that the Christian mandate to “love your enemies” is the only way to peace in the Middle East.
Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans
Gary Krist - 2014
This early-20th-century battle centers on one man: Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city's Storyville vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact as it faces onslaughts from all sides. Surrounding him are the stories of flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy in a wild and wicked city unlike any other in the world.
The Second Mark: Courage, Corruption, and the Battle for Olympic Gold
Joy Goodwin - 2004
Technical ability was approximately equal. It was the artistic merit score that would decide the gold medal -- the second mark.Representing Canada, China, and Russia, the three pairs illuminated their distinct cultures. On the second mark, whose culture would triumph? Would it be the beauty of the Russians' ballet on ice, the thrill of the Chinese pair's heart-stopping acrobatics, or the Canadians' passionate connection with the audience? In a down-to-the-wire nail-biter, the difference between gold and silver came down to the vote of a single judge. Hours later, a bombshell: the confession of a French judge unleashed a worldwide debate -- and ultimately produced an unprecedented duplicate gold medal."The Second Mark" reveals what an athlete really goes through to become the best in the world, through the riveting stories of unforgettable people. We meet Yelena Berezhnaya of Russia, who survives emergency brain surgery after a near-fatal training accident and makes it back to the Olympics in less than two years. We meet Zhao Hongbo, a young boy skating in subzero weather in remotest China, who will fulfill his coach's twenty-year dream of catching up to the West. And we meet two Canadians, a barista and a concession stand worker, who had almost quit the sport before deciding to give it one last try -- and becoming world champions.Exhaustively researched by a skating insider, "The Second Mark" takes readers deep into the world of the Olympic athlete, illuminating the fascinating differences between East and West. From the frozen fields of China to the secret corridors of the old Soviet sports system, from a tiny farm village in remotest Quebec to the judges' backstage world, "The Second Mark" tells the compelling human stories behind one of the most controversial nights in Olympic history.
Life of Tom Horn: Government Scout and Interpreter
Tom Horn - 1904
Tom Horn awaits execution for the murder of fourteen-year-old boy. He writes this memoir.
Tom Horn was born in Missouri, in 1860. His parents, who were deeply religious, regularly beat him – on one occasion leaving him laid up in the family barn, where he needed a week to recover. Their attempts to beat him into submission soon ended when aged just fourteen years old, he left home and headed West. With $11 in his pocket after selling his rifle, and nothing to stay for after his beloved dog had been shot, young farm boy Tom Horn travelled through Kansas and reached Santa Fe in 1874. Horn went on to become many things. He was to become a pivotal figure in the cattle business, making a name for himself amid growing hostility between cattle barons and settlers as a government scout and interpreter for Generals Wilcox, Crook and Miles in the Apache wars. He was assistant to the infamous Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts, and was known as the ‘King of Cowboys’. He was a Pinkerton, a cowboy, a range detective and a gunman with potentially lethal ability – yet he was well respected and known as a gentleman who was true to his word. In this account of his life, he recounts the shocking events that led to his imprisonment for the murder a fourteen year old boy. It was a crime for which he was hanged in 1904, and many think he was wrongly accused. Life of Tom Horn is a compelling western and a story of guilt, innocence and justice amongst the Apache Wars. Tom Horn (1860-1903) was a US Army Scout, Pinkerton, cowboy, detective and assassin. He wrote his memoirs whilst in jail for a murder. His innocence is still debated.
The Dirtiest Race in History: Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis and the Olympic 100m Final
Richard Moore - 2012
This book is a groundbreaking investigative account into the story of Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, and how one of the oldest of Olympic sports became a complex high-stakes game of cheating, cover-up, and fallen heroes.The book follows the remarkable buildup to the showdown of the two rival track superstars and chronicles Johnson’s gold medal win, a title he retained only briefly before he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and Lewis was awarded the gold. In 1999, however, after being named Sportsman of the Century by the IOC, Lewis his credibility damaged by revelations that he, too, used performance-enhancing drugs and tested positive prior to the Seoul Olympics.Containing stunning new revelations, this book features candid witness interviews, including with Johnson and Lewis, to reconstruct the race, the hype, the drugs, and the deception, and it examines how the fallout continues to impact sports today, as every new record is met with widespread skepticism.