Books - Harry Blutstein

What was behind the black power salute, boycotts, and political battles that characterized the 1968 Summer Olympics?

The year 1968 was ablaze with passion and mayhem as protests erupted in Paris and Prague, throughout the United States, and in cities on all continents. The Summer Olympic Games in Mexico were to be a moment of respite from chaos. But the image of peace - a white dove - adopted by organizers was an illusion, as was obvious to a record six hundred million people watching worldwide on satellite television.

Ten days before the opening ceremony, soldiers slaughtered hundreds of student protesters in the capital. In Games of Discontent Harry Blutstein presents vivid accounts of threatened boycotts to protest racism in the United States, South Africa, and Rhodesia. He describes demonstrations by Czechoslovak gold medal gymnast Věra Čáslavská against the Soviet-led invasion of her country. The most dramatic moment of the Olympic Games was Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s black power salute from the podium. Blutstein presents new details behind their protest and examines how this iconic image seared itself into historical memory, inspiring Colin Kaepernick and a new generation of athlete-activists to take a knee against racism decades later.

The 1968 Summer Games became a microcosm of the discord happening around the globe. Describing a range of protest activities preceding and surrounding the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, Games of Discontent shines light on the world during a politically transformative time when discontents were able, for the first time, to globalize their protests.

Games of Discontent (ISBN 978-0-2280-0675-6) will be released on April 15, 2021 by McGill-Queen’s University Press in hardback and as an electronic book. It will be available from the publisher, bookshops and Amazon.

The 1956 Olympic Games held in Melbourne in 1956 have become known as the ‘friendly games’, but East West rivalry ensured that they were anything but friendly. The bloody semi-final water polo match between the USSR and Hungary provides just one example of how sport and politics mixed during the Cold War. Cold War Games shows vividly how the USSR and US exploited the Melbourne Olympic Games for propaganda, turning athletic fields, swimming pools and other sporting venues into battlefields in which each fought for supremacy. The Melbourne Olympics also marked a turning point. For the first time the USSR beat the United States by winning the most medals, which Khrushchev hailed as a major victory in the Cold War. The Melbourne Olympics were held in the shadow of the Hungarian revolution, which broke out a month earlier. Eisenhower’s former Cold War advisor, CD Jackson directed a clandestine operation in Melbourne to encourage communist athletes to defect. A total of 46 athletes defected, despite the efforts by secret agents, attached to the teams from the communist bloc. Many of the defectors went to the US and participated in the Freedom Tour, which the State Department exploited for propaganda. Cold War Games also tells the love story between Czechoslovak discus thrower, Olga Fikotová and American hammer thrower, Hal Connolly and their struggle to overcome Cold War politics to marry. New information from ASIO files and newly discovered documents from archives in the USSR, US and Hungary reveal other secret operations in Melbourne that confirms that the 1956 Olympics were undoubtedly the first Cold War Olympics. Cold War Games (ISBN: 978-1-7604-0568-7) was published in Australia by Bonnier Echo in August 2017 and is available from: Allen & Unwin and Book Depository. The book will be available outside Australia in February 2022, when a revised edition will be published by McFarland.

Why is the ‘new global order’ so disorderly? How has globalisation created a fragile and unstable financial system, fostered unfair international trade, allowed capital to move around the world virtually unregulated and produced dysfunctional institutions like the European Union and the United Nations? The Ascent of Globalisation answers these questions by delving into the history of globalisation, from its origins, at the end of the Second World War, to the present day. Harry Blutstein has written a highly accessible history by telling the story of globalisation through intimate portraits of nineteen of its most influential architects. Engaging anecdotes, telling personal details and accounts of the off-stage dramas enliven each of the stories, many of which have never been told before. By going behind the scenes, The Ascent of Globalisation reveals how the fundamental building blocks of international organisations — the World Bank, IMF, UN, WHO and World Trade Organization — as well as the rules that govern international markets, depended on the ideas, drive and skill of these pioneering architects. It also shows that the design of global rules and institutions has been profoundly affected by the war of ideas between liberals and neoliberals, lobbying by transnational corporations and the demands of realpolitik, as nation states wage a rearguard defence of their sovereignty. As a result, globalisation is deeply flawed. The Ascent of Globalisation will appeal to both general readers, and secondary and tertiary students who are looking for a comprehensive introduction to globalisation. The Ascent of Globalisation (ISBN: 978-0-7190-9971-7) is available from: Manchester University Press, Amazon UK, www.amazon.co.uk and in the United States from Oxford University Press.

Insider’s Guide to Australia (Kummerly & Frey) was first published in 1994 and republished a year later. This travel guidebook was commissioned by Ansell and was part of a series that competed with Lonely Planet guidebooks, and while successful for a time, the series disappeared sometime in the early 2000s. The guide I wrote was issued in French, Spanish and German. It is now well out of date, and I doubt that even Amazon would have copies for sale.

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