Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World

David Maraniss

Jul 2008 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by David Maraniss

About this audiobook

From the New York Times bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered, the blockbuster story of the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, seventeen days that helped define the modern world.


Legendary athletes and stirring events are interwoven into a suspenseful narrative of sports and politics at the Rome games, where cold-war propaganda and spies, drugs and sex, money and television, civil rights and the rise of women superstars all converged to forever change the essence of the Olympics.

Using the meticulous research and sweeping narrative style that have become his trademark, maraniss reveals the rich palette of character, competition, and meaning that gave rome 1960 its singular essence.

About the author

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History).