A timely, no-holds barred, critical political history of the modern Olympic Games
Jules Boykoff is an academic, author, and former professional soccer player. He is the author of Activism and the Olympics, Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games, Landscapes of Dissent, Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States, among others. He has been called "one of the biggest names in international Olympic Games academia." His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he has been interviewed on the BBC and Democracy Now! He is a professor of Politics and Government at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.
An Olympic history that simply hasn't been told.
*Olympic medalist John Carlos, author of The John Carlos
Story*
Should be on every Olympian's bookshelf.
*Laurence Halsted, fencer and "Team GB" Olympian at Rio 2016*
[Boykoff's] jaunty polemic Power Games is billed as a political
history of the Olympics. It is actually more of a call-to-arms to
people faced with this giant intrusion.
*Financial Times*
As much a tool for activists as a work of scholarship, [Power
Games] relentlessly attacks the hypocrisy of the Olympic myth.
*Washington Post*
A great irony is that the modern Olympics, first envisioned as an
alternative to war, have themselves become a form of low-intensity
warfare. As Jules Boykoff chronicles in this pathbreaking history,
host cities have used the Games to leverage urban renewal,
neighborhood demolition, and mass population displacement. The
preparations for the Rio Olympics have gone one step further and
become a literal urban counterinsurgency, as elite police units
occupy and 'cleanse' one favela after another.
*Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums*
Jules Boykoff takes us deep into the heart to of the Olympic
industry to look at the experiences of the people who are affected
most by these Games-you and me. This powerful book explores how
individuals and groups-from Indigenous people, to athletes to the
homeless-have opened our eyes to the possibility of a more humane
world through the Olympics. Boykoff also makes it clear that the
Olympics have amends to make with Indigenous people worldwide,
whether in Canada, the United States, or Australia. Indigenous
people have struggled to defend their lands and rights against the
Olympic juggernaut, linking their struggles with those of the
broader public, showing us how the Games could and should leave
better legacies for all, not just the well-to-do. Power Games is an
insightful chronicle of Indigenous activism in and against the
Games, as well as an intellectual roadmap for how all of our
interests are intertwined. In elevating Indigenous voices, Boykoff
also exposes the problematic representations of Indigenous people
that are frequently proffered by Olympic-controlled media. Power
Games is an important and approachable work that should be on every
bookshelf, a must read for anyone interested in the future of the
Games.
*Janice Forsyth, former Director of the International Centre for
Olympic Studies at Western University in Ontario, member of the
Fisher River Cree First Nation*
Even since Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the International Olympic
Committee has sought to deny the inherently political nature of the
modern Olympic games. In Power Games: A Political History of the
Olympics, Jules Boykoff, arguably the world's leading authority on
the Olympic movement, exposes the IOC's claims of apoliticism as a
sham. Through a carefully researched history of the Olympic Games,
Boykoff skillfully details how the Olympics benefit political
elites and corporate interests at the expense of local host cities
and even democracy itself. But this is no pessimistic account.
Boykoff ends by outlining how a more democratic and transparent
Olympics is still possible, making Power Games essential reading
for anyone wanting to understanding the power and importance of the
modern Olympics.
*Ben Carrington, University of Texas at Austin, author of Race,
Sport and Politics*
Enjoyable and informative, Power Games is an even more relevant
read in the build-up to this summer's . Olympics.
*Morning Star*
An important read for those who will be watching this summer's
contests in Rio. Even more importantly, though, it is a necessary
text for those who live in cities the International Olympic
Committee is eyeing for its next overpriced neoliberal capitalist
extravaganza. The people of Boston sent the IOC packing in 2015 for
many of the reasons elucidated in this history. Other cities would
do well to do the same. This book explains why.
*Counterpunch*
This explosive book leaves us asking whether the IOC's insistence
that sport is above such concerns as justice, liberty and human
rights has not in fact been a fundamentally corrosive stance from
the start.
*Sunday Herald*
[Power Games is] really two books in one: a historical overview of
the Games' checkered history and a searing indictment of the IOC's
hypocrisy and hubris...unrelentingly critical [and also]
constructive.
*Jacobin*
A truly inside-track critique of the fanfare, Boykoff addresses the
games as a site of scandal and rebellion.
*MobyLives!*
A timely and depressing reminder of the grisly underbelly of the
Olympic Games.
*Irish Times*
By examining Olympic history from the revival of the Games in 1896
to the imminent Rio Olympics, Boykoff traces how the Olympics have
developed into the behemoth that has transformed Rio over the past
seven years. Beyond this, he also provides fantastic detail on many
of the egregious abuses in the name of Rio 2016.
*RioOnWatch*
To anyone who believes that the excesses of the Games over the past
50 years or so have betrayed a purer original legacy, [Power Games]
by Jules Boykoff provides a bracing corrective.
*Spectator*
Jules Boykoff debunks any remaining myths associated with the
'spirit' and 'goodwill' of the Olympic 'movement' by attending
closely to the machinations of this monopolistic, non-sovereign,
and largely unaccountable organization and its beneficiaries.
*Public Books*
As sporting mega-events become the focus of a growing number of
activists, Power Games provides the basis for those campaigns to be
better informed and more effective.
*Red Pepper*
Jules Boykoff's Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics is
a smart, sharp, and critically balanced outline of the modern
Olympic revival.
*Boston Review*
Exhuastively researched and clearly written.
*Times Literary Supplement*
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