Analysis from the perspective of those adversely affected by the social, economic, political, and environmental impacts of hosting an Olympic Games.

In a startling expose of the Olympic industry, Helen Jefferson Lenskyj goes beyond the media hype of international goodwill and spirited competition to uncover a darker side of the global Games. She reports on the pre- and post-Olympic impacts from recent host cities, bribery investigations and their outcomes, grassroots resistance movements, and the role of the mass media in the controversy. A highly accessible book about a complex subject that touches the hearts of sports fans everywhere, Inside the Olympic Industry is a must-read, behind-the-scenes look at the politics surrounding the choice of Sydney, Australia as host city for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games.

A critical look at the Olympics in the postbribery, post-9/11 era, particularly at consequences for host cities and so-called “Olympic education” for schoolchildren.

This book explores how the Olympic industry has shaped hegemonic concepts of sporting masculinities and femininities for its own profit and image-making ends, examining its continuing marginalization of athletes on account of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class.

Scholar and activist Helen Jefferson Lenskyj continues her critique of the Olympic industry, looking specifically at developments in the post-9/11 and postbribery scandal era. Examining events and activism in host cities, as well as in several locations that bid unsuccessfully on the Olympics, Lenskyj shows how basic rights and freedoms, particularly of the press and of assembly, are compromised. Lenskyj investigates the pro-Olympic bias in media treatment of bids and preparations, the fallen hero phenomenon that includes doping and female athletes who pose nude in calendars, and takes issue with Olympic education curricular materials for schoolchildren. Also discussed are the problems of housing and homelessness created when the Olympics become a catalyst for urban redevelopment projects.

Do the Olympic Games really live up to their glowing reputation? As the biggest global sport mega-event, the Olympic Games command public and media attention, while Olympic mythology and ritual obscure their underlying function as a profit-making business enterprise.

The Olympics have developed into the world's premier sporting event. They are simultaneously a competitive exhibition and a grand display of cooperation that bring together global cultures on ski slopes, shooting ranges, swimming pools, and track ovals. Given their scale in the modern era, the Games are a useful window for better comprehending larger cultural, social, and historical processes, argues Jules Boykoff, an academic social scientist and a former Olympic athlete. In Activism and the Olympics, Boykoff provides a critical overview of the Olympic industry and its political opponents in the modern era. After presenting a brief history of Olympic activism, he turns his attention to on-the-ground activism through the lens of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Here we see how anti-Olympic activists deploy a range of approaches to challenge the Olympic machine, from direct action and the seizure of public space to humor-based and online tactics. Drawing on primary evidence from myriad personal interviews with activists, journalists, civil libertarians, and Olympics organizers, Boykoff angles in on the Games from numerous vantages and viewpoints. Although modern Olympic authorities have strived—even through the Cold War era—to appear apolitical, Boykoff notes, the Games have always been the site of hotly contested political actions and competing interests. During the last thirty years, as the Olympics became an economic juggernaut, they also generated numerous reactions from groups that have sought to challenge the event’s triumphalism and pageantry. The 21st century has seen an increased level of activism across the world, from the Occupy Movement in the United States to the Arab Spring in the Middle East. What does this spike in dissent mean for Olympic activists as they prepare for future Games?