Triumph by Jeremy Schaap

Triumph

The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics

Jeremy Schaap

HarperCollins · Print & ebook · February 5, 2008

This New York Times best-selling author’s account of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin offers a “vivid portrait not just of Owens but of ’30s Germany and America” (Sports Illustrated).

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Who it’s for
A tense Olympic contest becomes a clear-eyed story of athletic achievement, courage, and political spectacle.
Themes
Racial supremacy and its challenge, Courage, Athletic achievement beyond sports
Pacing
Fast

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Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved. Most of these share its genres: Sports Lives and Olympics.

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For younger readers: Jim Thorpe, Original All-american, Who Was Jesse Owens?, War in the Ring

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About this book

This New York Times best-selling author’s account of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin offers a “vivid portrait not just of Owens but of ’30s Germany and America” (Sports Illustrated). At the 1936 Olympics, against a backdrop of swastikas and goose-stepping storm troopers, an African American son of sharecroppers won a staggering four gold medals, single-handedly falsifying Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy.

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The story of Jesse Owens at the Berlin games is that of an athletic performance that transcends sports. It is also the intimate and complex tale of one remarkable man’s courage. Drawing on unprecedented access to the Owens family, previously unpublished interviews, and archival research, Jeremy Schaap transports us to Germany and tells the dramatic tale of Owens and his fellow athletes at the contest dubbed the Nazi Olympics. With incisive reporting and rich storytelling, Schaap reveals what really happened over those tense, exhilarating weeks in a “snappy and dramatic” work of sports history (Publishers Weekly). “A remarkable job of tackling a complex subject and bringing it to life.” — John Feinstein “Add[s] even more luster to the indelibly heroic achievements of Jesse Owens.” — Ken Burns

Beyond the Medals

A tense Olympic contest becomes a clear-eyed story of athletic achievement, courage, and political spectacle.

Come here for

  • Jesse Owens and the stakes of the 1936 Berlin Games
  • Sports history with a wider cultural frame

Expect

  • A dramatic account grounded in reporting and archival research
  • An intimate portrait set against a charged historical moment

Where it sits

Sports Lives79%
Olympics40%
World War II History24%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Political Lives
  • Sports Lives
  • The Americas History
  • International Relations
Show all 8 publisher categories
  • State & Provincial Government
  • World Politics
  • Geopolitics
  • History of Science
Authors
Jeremy Schaap
Publisher
HarperCollins
Published
February 5, 2008
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Racial supremacy and its challenge · Courage · Athletic achievement beyond sports
Reading lane
Political Lives