Power Games:A Political History of the Olympics

As much a tool for activists as a work of scholarship, [Power Games] relentlessly attacks the hypocrisy of the Olympic myth.

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.

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.

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.

Enjoyable and informative, Power Games is an even more relevant read in the build-up to this summer’s … Olympics.

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.

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.

[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.

A truly inside-track critique of the fanfare, Boykoff addresses the games as a site of scandal and rebellion.

A timely and depressing reminder of the grisly underbelly of the Olympic Games.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jules Boykoff’s Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics is a smart, sharp, and critically balanced outline of the modern Olympic revival.

Exhuastively researched and clearly written.