The Olympics that Never Happened maps Denver’s unique place in Olympic history with overwhelming detail...Berg’s historiography is complicated...but it explains the appetite driving initiatives that seem to help communities, especially when they are wrapped as patriotic gifts devoid of community scrutiny, until the community acts.
(Sport Literature Association) [A] solidly put together study...this book is going to be relevant for scholars in several fields of history but also in urban planning and public policy.
(History: Reviews of New Books) The Olympics That Never Happened: Denver ‘76 and the Politics of Growth should appeal to a wide audience given the variety of topics covered. The book would serve as a solid secondary text on a course on the Olympics or politics in sport, as well as a useful supplemental text in any number of sport management courses, including courses on mega-events, economic impact, governance, ethics, sport history, sport in society, sport tourism, or sport ecology. The result of Berg’s considerable effort is a book that leaves the reader feeling as if no stone has been left unturned in explaining how the Denver ‘76 Winter Olympic Games never happened.
(Human Kinetics Journals: Journal of Sport Management) The research underpinning this study is broad, thorough, and impressive, including interviews with many of the key actors in the story. Herein lies the value of this book. More than simply filling in a gap in Olympic scholarship, it offers an engagingly written snapshot of how a diversity of Americans understood the social role of government at the very moment that globalization began forcing the state into retreat. Berg's monograph will hold interest for Olympic specialists and generalists alike.
(Journal of Sport History) Adam Berg's The Olympics That Never Happened is now the definitive account of this fascinating story, one that should interest a range of readers with interests in the history of the American West, post–World War II urban history, and social activist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. . . . Berg's excellent book makes a strong case that the most deserving example on that list-at least in terms of highlighting important themes in twentieth-century U.S. history-is the one historians and popular readers have long forgotten: Denver '76.
(Journal of American History)
