Book Description"Let the games begin!" is a cry that has stirred athletes and citizens from countries all over the world for more than a hundred years. In Swifter, Higher, Stronger, Sue Macy has captured a compelling and comprehensive portrait of the summer Olympics, one that spans contests and culture, pageantry and history. In five hard-to-put-down chapters, she explains the revival of the modern Olympics and how they survived boycotts, wars, and terrorism to grow into the vast media event we know today. She profiles the breakthrough athletes who became household names after hanging medal upon medal around their necks: names like Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrikson, and Jackie Joyner Kersey. She shows how the Games were always much more than mere contests of athleticism. You'll read about the Olympics as a platform for world politics, such as when Jimmy Carter led the U.S. and more than 60 other nations to sit out the 1980 Moscow Olympics as a protest to the Soviet Union's...