Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics » (Reprint)

Jeremy Schaap is the author of the New York Times bestseller Cinderella Man. An ESPN anchor and national correspondent, his work has been published in Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, Time, Parade, TV Guide, and the New York Times. He has also appeared on ABC's World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News. He is the son of the award-winning journalist Dick Schaap.

The story of Jesse Owens, the African-American son of sharecroppers who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games held in Nazi Germany, is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. It is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man. Unabridged. 7 CDs.

Publishers Weekly

Written as though the film treatment were already completed, Schaap's chronicle of Jesse Owens's journey to and glorious triumph at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is snappy and dramatic, with an eye for the rousing climax, through curiously slight on follow-through. Starting with Owens as the well-feted ex-athlete in the 1950s, Schaap (an ESPN anchor and author of Cinderella Man) flashes back to Owens's childhood in 1920s Cleveland, where junior high coach Charles Riley spotted his astounding physique and near limitless potential for track and field. Owens seems so perfectly made for running and jumping that the following years of ever-increasing athletic and popular success are less exciting than preordained. By the time the "Ebony Antelope" (as one of many adoring newspapermen had anointed him) was ready for Berlin, his success was practically guaranteed. The real drama of Schaap's book, which surprisingly skimps on Owens the person, comes in the politically fractious runup to Berlin (for the ceremony-obsessed Hitler, "a fascist fantasy come true"). While the story has been told many times, Schaap makes good use of his prodigious research and access to the Owens family, even digging up the fact that Owens's oft-repeated claim he was snubbed by Hitler and the Berlin crowd was very likely untrue. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Prologue     xi
Part I
A Day to Remember     3
Out of Alabama     14
Vincible     31
Heel Bones and a New Start     55
Part II
The Judge and the Millionaire     63
"We Are with You, Adolf"     83
A Blessing in Disguise     98
Jew Kills Nazi     105
A Friend and a Foe Felled     112
Olympic Trials     122
Part III
Olympia     137
The Belle of the Ball     142
The Battle Tent of Some Great Emperor     150
The Youth of the World     159
Day One     172
Day Two     183
Day Three     196
"He Flies Like the Hindenburg": Day Four     213
The Relay     219
Epilogue     230
Notes     237
Acknowledgments     257
Index     261