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’36 Summer Olympics Were More Than Just Games: New Book Sounds Real-World Alarms

Sportswriters will say that their job is often mockingly referred to as the “toy department” of news, as if fun and games are unimportant. A newly released book, PLAYED: The Games of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, illustrates just how significant and historic the sporting world can be.

Co-authors Richard Kaufman and Glenn Allen take readers into a time and place when the world felt like it was teetering on the brink of war, Nazi Germany was rattling its sabers, and one of the most memorable of all Olympic Games was taking place in Berlin.

PLAYED blends politics, sports, espionage, and courage, all in a real-world setting where the most popular hero was American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. That stuck a needle in Adolf Hitler’s attempt to use the games to prove his theory of Aryan racial superiority.

PLAYED feels real because it is based on real events, real outcomes, and real people, including American Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Goebbels, and Eva Braun.

The authors say the most important message of their story is that history must not repeat itself … a poignant thought in this, the year of the 2024 Paris Olympics, where Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from participating in team sports due to the war in Ukraine.

Dr. Thomas Law gave PLAYED five stars and wrote in his review, “To those of us who are history buffs, this is a must-read, especially if you are enthralled with the events leading up to the Second World War, xenophobia, lust for power and their current implications … Although the book presents itself as ‘a novel,’ the people and events are real. This makes the dialogue (the fictional parts, I presume) come alive and seem likely to have happened.” 

Richard Kaufman and Glenn Allen have been writing together for over 25 years. They have numerous projects in development, including scripted feature films, docuseries, and television series, and they have co-written and produced two award-winning independent films, all under the banner of their company, Green Bandana.

 Visit  www.greenbandana.org for more information.

PLAYED: The Games of the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Publisher: WordServe Publishing

ISBN-10  : 1733170758

ISBN-13 : 978-1733170758

Available from Amazon.com