Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics

by Jeremy Schaap, Michael Kramer (narrator), Tantor Audio (publisher)

In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers looming, an African-American son of sharecroppers set three world records and won an unprecedented four gold medals, single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man. Drawing on unprecedented access to the Owens family, previously unpublished interviews, and exhaustive archival research, Jeremy Schaap transports us to Nazi Germany to weave this dramatic tale.

From the start, American participation in the games was controversial. A boycott, based on reports of Nazi hostility to Jews, was afoot, but it was thwarted by the president of the American Olympic Committee. At the games themselves, the plots and intrigues Owens was befriended by a German rival, broad jumper Luz Long, who helped Owens win the gold medal at his own expense. Two Jewish sprinters were, at the last moment, denied the chance to compete for the United States out of misguided politeness to the Nazi hosts. And a myth was born that Hitler himself had snubbed Owens.

Like Neal Bascomb's The Perfect Mile, Triumph captures this momentous episode in sports - and - world, history in a nuanced yet page-turning narrative full of drama, suspense, and color.

Audible Audio

Published February 21, 2007

About the author

From wikipedia article on author Jeremy Schaap (b. August 23, 1969, New York City) is an American sportswriter, television reporter, and author. Schaap is a six-time Emmy award winner for his work on ESPN's E:60, SportsCenter and Outside the Lines.
He is a regular contributor to Nightline and ABC World News Tonight and has been published in Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, Time, Parade, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
A native and resident of New York City, Schaap is the author of Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History (Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-618-55117-4), a New York Times best-seller, and Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics.
Schaap is the son of the late journalist and broadcaster Dick Schaap. Like his father, Schaap is an alumnus of Cornell University and a former editor of The Cornell Daily Sun. Schaap was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society. He won the Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Writing at the 2005 Emmys, an award named after his father, for an Outside the Lines feature entitled "Finding Bobby Fischer." Schaap and his wife have one child, a daughter.