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While we may watch the Olympics for the seemingly superhuman feats of strength and dexterity on display, we are also frequently captivated by the very human drama and personal stories of the athletes competing. Here are a few books that capture some of these stories along with some of the most pivotal moments in the history of the games. Pick up a title or two on this list to get a glimpse of Olympians’ experiences — their hopes, dreams, and journeys — as well as a better understanding of the complex (and sometimes fraught) past of the Olympics.
Paperback May 2014. 416 pages
Published by Penguin Books
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, first published in 2013, continues to be considered one of the best works centered on Olympians, and it recently made our list of book clubs’ all-time favorite titles as chosen by BookBrowse subscribers. Brown’s book is the inspiring underdog story of the American rowing team that secured victory at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, a group of working-class young men from the University of Washington. The Guardian called it “a fine-grained portrait of the Depression era, with its economic and climatic horrors set against youthful dreams.” A film based on the book, directed by George Clooney, was released in 2023.
Paperback September 2021. 400 pages
Published by Atria Books
The 1936 Olympics were a defining, landmark event, as the games were hosted by Nazi Germany and overseen by Adolf Hitler, who hoped they would highlight supposed Aryan supremacy. This plan was famously disrupted by the Black American athlete Jesse Owens, who took home four gold medals in track and field events. But despite the oppression that worked against Black people in the United States gaining recognition in any area, Owens was far from the only Black competitor on the American team that year. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice explores the experiences of 17 others whose stories are virtually untold elsewhere. The 2021 book is based on (and may be interesting for book clubs to pair with) Deborah Riley Draper's 2016 documentary film of the same name, which aired on PBS.
Jun 2024. 432 pages
Published by Liveright/W.W. Norton
Synchronized swimming is sometimes viewed as a curiosity rather than a serious sport in its own right, but the reality is that it's as much about athletics as aesthetics. Furthermore, while women swimmers and divers can now compete at all levels, appearing in the Olympics and other events just like their male counterparts, this wasn’t always the case. In an engaging historical account, Vicki Valosik presents the origins of aquatic performance and explores how it relates to the history of women’s swimming in general. The book starts in the late 19th century, follows the evolution of women’s water athletics up through 1984, when synchronized swimming was introduced as an Olympic sport, and continues to the present.
Paperback July 2020. 512 pages
Published by William Morrow
Don’t worry, historical fiction fans, we have you covered! While there are plenty of nonfiction accounts of the Olympics, including the globally significant 1936 games, novels can seem harder to come by — but Elise Hooper has risen to the occasion. This 2020 title is based on the real-life story of the first integrated Olympic women’s track team, and recounts Olympiads previous to '36 as well, focusing on the experiences of three athletes — Betty Robinson, Helen Stephens, and Louise Stokes — with dreams of success. A starred review from Booklist recommends the novel to "fans of historical fiction about real people, and stories about little-known female heroes breaking through barriers.”
Jun 2024. 368 pages
Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
In this informative work, Michael Waters frames the subject of gender categorization in sports broadly, exposing the roots of modern sex-testing as a facet of bureaucracy (associated with the Nazi regime) and shedding light on the history of transgender people in the Olympics and athletics as a whole. As the book explains, the IAAF (International Amateur Athletic Federation), the same body to subject South African middle-distance runner and Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya to “gender tests” in recent years, was first formed in 1913 and became involved in regulating gender in sports in the 1920s and ‘30s, although the general public did not seem particularly interested in scrutinizing the participation of trans and intersex people in athletics at the time. In a recent interview, Waters noted, “When we are defining who can be in men's sports and who can be in women's sports, we are making choices. And these officials are making subjective choices, sometimes without really considering the ramifications of their choices, all throughout the 20th century and into today.”
Jul 2008. 496 pages
Published by Simon & Schuster
Like the ‘36 games, the 1960 Olympics were a highlight in sports history, where more than athletics was at stake. Cold War tensions ran high, Black American athletes were finally receiving recognition for their achievements but still lacked basic civil rights in everyday society, and steroid use was becoming an issue. This was also the first televised Olympics, marking the advent of the games as most of us know and enjoy them today. Kirkus called this account from David Maraniss “Evocative, entertaining and often suspenseful—sports history at a very high standard.” Maraniss is also the author of Path Lit by Lightning, an ambitious biography of multi-sport athlete Jim Thorpe, who won two gold medals at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912 and is still widely considered one of the greatest competitors of all time.
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