Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War
Cambridge University Press, 9/30/2010
EAN 9780521194778, ISBN10: 0521194776
Hardcover, 356 pages, 23.5 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War offers a diplomatic history of the 1980 Olympic boycott. Broad in its focus, it looks at events in Washington, D.C., as well as the opposition to the boycott and how this attempted embargo affected the athletic contests in Moscow. Jimmy Carter based his foreign policy on assumptions that had fundamental flaws and reflected a superficial familiarity with the Olympic movement. These basic mistakes led to a campaign that failed to meet its basic mission objectives but did manage to insult the Soviets just enough to destroy détente and restart the Cold War. The book also includes a military history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which provoked the boycott, and an examination of the boycott's impact four years later at the Los Angeles Olympics, where the Soviet Union retaliated with its own boycott.
Introduction
miracle on ice
1. Lord Killanin and the politics of the Olympics
2. Los Angeles versus Moscow
3. Jimmy Carter and U.S.-Soviet relations
4. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
5. The American response
6. Easy victories
7. Painful losses
8. The White House games
9. Coca-Cola, NBC, and the defeat of the Iron Lady
10. The vote in Colorado
11. Civil wars
12. Carter versus Killanin
13. Moscow
the Olympics are the Olympics
14. Los Angeles
the Olympics are the Olympics
15. Conclusion
Epilogue.