The Other Olympians
Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports
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Narrated by:
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Jennifer Pickens
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By:
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Michael Waters
About this listen
"Michael Waters performs an Olympian act of storytelling, using the stories of these extraordinary athletes to explore in brilliant detail the struggle for understanding and equality."—Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life
“This riveting audiobook brings all the facts and showcases why we need to acknowledge true history in today’s social climate.”—Book Riot
"Narrator Jennifer Pickens brings the stories in this superbly researched audiobook to life."—AudioFile
The story of the early trans athletes and Olympic bureaucrats who lit the flame for today’s culture wars.
In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news; both became global celebrities. A few decades later, they were all but forgotten. And in the wake of their transitions, what could have been a push toward equality became instead, through a confluence of bureaucracy, war, and sheer happenstance, the exact opposite: the now all-too-familiar panic around trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming athletes.
In The Other Olympians, Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the gripping true stories of Koubek, Weston, and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era. With dogged research and cinematic flair, Waters also tracks how International Olympic Committee members ignored Nazi Germany’s atrocities in order to pull off the Berlin Games, a partnership that ultimately influenced the IOC’s nearly century-long obsession with surveilling and cataloging gender.
Immersive and revelatory, The Other Olympians is a groundbreaking, hidden-in-the-archives marvel, an inspiring call for equality, and an essential contribution toward understanding the contemporary culture wars over gender in sports.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
©2024 Michael Waters (P)2024 Macmillan AudioCritic reviews
"A riveting and important work of history. Michael Waters performs an Olympian act of storytelling, using the stories of these extraordinary athletes to explore in brilliant detail the struggle for understanding and equality. The Other Olympians is a book of great originality, deeply researched and beautifully written."—Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life
“Michael Waters masterfully puts into focus the long-overlooked, yet remarkable stories of a cadre of Olympians who battled for their right to compete on the world’s biggest stage as their true selves. A crucial read for anyone interested in the intersection of sports, identity, and social justice.”—Neal Bascomb, author of The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It
"A remarkable and compelling chronicle of a forgotten episode in both the history of sport and the history of gender that demonstrates their centrality in the Nazis' rise to power."—Drew Gilpin Faust, author of Necessary Trouble
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- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
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Blah
- By sarah belson on 05-29-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
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The Swimmers
- A Novel
- By: Julie Otsuka
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief.
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Life before and during dementia
- By L. S. on 05-26-23
By: Julie Otsuka
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Little Girls in Pretty Boxes
- The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters
- By: Joan Ryan
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jill Araya
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the world of women's gymnastics and figure skating. From starvation diets and debilitating injuries to the brutal tactics of tyrannical gymnastics guru Bela Károlyi, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes portrays the horrors endured by girls at the hands of their coaches and sometimes their own families - and is now updated with a new introduction and foreword that address the sexual abuse scandal perpetrated by USA Gymnastics national team doctor, Larry Nassar.
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Holds up 20 years later
- By Pink Amy on 04-04-21
By: Joan Ryan
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The Jakarta Method
- Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World
- By: Vincent Bevins
- Narrated by: Tim Paige
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1965, the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the 20th century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful.
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Great book, but the narration has serious flaws
- By Prof. Neil Larsen on 08-03-20
By: Vincent Bevins
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Born to Run
- A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
- By: Christopher McDougall
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets. In the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit.
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Amazing read - even for non-runners
- By Corey on 05-31-09
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There's Always This Year
- On Basketball and Ascension
- By: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling.
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not for me
- By Mark on 07-29-24
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
What listeners say about The Other Olympians
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- JAMES W GOODWIN
- 11-19-24
How women athletes have been treated by the world
Informative and very good book highly recommend Avery Brundage was a Nazi and needs to be scrutinized
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- Jack W
- 06-29-24
Compelling narrative!
I don’t always reach for a history title, but this was a gorgeous and thoughtfully written narrative that has current relevance. Kudos to the narrator too. I’m glad I found this book!
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- Anonymous User
- 06-12-24
A great history.
Michael offers compelling stories that help us understand the subjective aspects of intrusive examinations that are designed to assign athletes to a simplistic and unnatural binary world.
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- Travis Osland
- 07-07-24
Wonderful Story from History
Really interesting stories about sex testing and the Olympics, great book. Gives good context for the modern day
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