Costco Connection - July 2008

book spotlight

No place like Rome

1960 Olympics defined a generation

By J. Rentilly

THERE IS ALWAYS A STORY within the story, at least for great journalists. This begins to explain how researching his critically acclaimed biography of baseball great Roberto Clemente led Pulitzer Prize–nominated Washington Post veteran David Maraniss to pen his most ambitious book yet, Rome 1960, a sweeping but deeply intimate work chronicling one of the Olympic Games’ most influential and resonant meetings.

Poring over old sports clippings, Maraniss repeatedly encountered effusive mentions of noted Olympians such as Wilma Rudolph, Rafer Johnson, Abebe Bikila and Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad A li), and quickly realized he simply had to know more. He became, in his own words, “obsessed” with th e

1960 Olympic Games.

“I have to be obsessed with the subject, and see the right convergence of themes with the arc of the narrative,” the

58-year-old Maraniss says.

“The 1960 Olympics drew me in because I saw the opportunity to weave politics, sports, sociology andculture—all culture—all subjects that I love—into a sing le narrativ e . I saw the full dimensions of life being played out in those games.”

Maraniss admits that other Olympic events—such as 1936’s collision of Nazism and racial-barrier-busting Jesse Owens, 1968’s black power movement or 1972’s Munich tragedy—may be, at first blush, more sensational, but he was nonetheless drawn to the comparatively safe, if no more sane, games of 1960.

“I saw in Rome a way to write about the stirring of the modern world in so many respects: the rise of blacks and women, the birth of modern Africa, the first televised Olympics, the first doping scandal, the heat of the Cold War and tensions in Germany and China, inevitable political tensions, the coming of the end of the old-boy definitions of amateurism,” Maraniss says. “The issues of those Olympics seemed to transcend the moment and tell us more about why we are at the place we are at today.”

And so Maraniss set to work on the book, which was three years in the making, scouring the globe—“many thousands of

miles,” he says—for countless exclusive interviews, research and reconnaissance.

“By the time I started writing, I had 80 three-ring binders of documents and another 10 big brown files of other documents and

LISA BERG

interviews,” he tells The Connection. He spent a month organizing the material into “a master chronology,” another month “sorting out themes and structure” and about nine months writing the book, though he says he “kept reporting throughout the writing process as I would see holes to fill.”

The resulting tome is epic and intimate, brimming with political intrigue and acts of unlikely athletic derring-do. It’s a grand adventure story, a stirring political com-mentary and a miraculous work of cultural anthropology. “David has a grasp of history and sweep,” says Post col-league Anne Hull, a national corre-spondent. “He understands how to set an event in the right context. When he first started reporting the Rome book, it was clear it wouldn’t sim- ply be a book about the Olympics, but a larger story about the world a nd America at that moment. He is a mixture of discipline and poetry, and this book fully reflects that.”

As hundreds of millions of television viewers around the globe look forward to this summer’s Olympic Games in China, Maraniss holds modest expectations for the event. “The Olympics are absolutely not what they used to be,” he says. “There is now too much of everything: too much money, too much TV exposure, too much access to drugs and other forms of cheating, too much of a separation between the athletes of that caliber and the rest of the society.”

But he hopes readers will enjoy the “ relative innocence” of the 1960 Olympic Games through reading his book. “I hope readers will feel like they were there, that they feel they know the characters and the world of that moment,” he says, “and that that understanding gives them a better appreciation of why things happened and how, and to see the connections between the past and the present.” C

David Maraniss

From top: Coach Ed Temple (center) built a powerhouse women’s track squad, led by Wilma Rudolph (left).

Livio Berruti won the 200-meter dash wearing sunglasses—not to look cool, but because he was so short-sighted that without them he could not see the finish tape.

Otis Davis of the University of Oregon leaps for joy upon learning that he has broken the world record in the 400 meters.

The Costco Connection Rome 1960, by David Maraniss, is available in most Costco locations.

After her brilliant performance in Rome, Rudolph was invited to the White House to visit with John F. Kennedy. The new president was so taken with her that he talked to her for an hour, leaving his next appointment waiting outside the Oval Office.