The Mock Olympian

Michael Long couldnt believe how lucky he was to be working in London during the 2012 Olympics, but when the games ended, he was crushed. He wanted nothing more than to keep the Olympics alive a little longer. That was when the former beer monster from university who had won an award for biggest party animal in his final year had a fateful thought: Could he race in every host city of the Summer Olympics before the next games began in four years? He decided it was worth a shot, and he began scouring the internet to find marathons, half marathons, 10K runs, triathlons, and other events in twenty-three Olympic cities that he planned to visit over the next few years. There would be lots of training, some hard falls, and victories along the way. But nothing would compare with the friendships he would make and the adventures he would enjoy. If youre passionate about traveling, running or bothor you want to be inspired to overcome your own challenges or simply want to giggle at someone elses misfortunesyoull want to read The Mock Olympian.

In 1753 Robert Dodsley published Designs by Mr. R. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray. Sponsored by Horace Walpole, this luxurious quarto was the first major aesthetic expression of the Strawberry Hill circle and a landmark in English book illustration. Kenneth Clarke called it "the most graceful monument to Gothic Rococo." Its witty interplay between illustration and text anticipated Blake, who studied it some thirty years later. Among its poems is Gray's famous Elegy Written in a Courtly Church-Yard. Loftus Jestin offers a facsimile of Designs (out of print since 1786) and a full-length interdisciplinary study of the collaboration of Bentley, Gray, and Walpole that produced this extraordinary book. He shows the way poems and illustration at once complement, compete with and invigorate each other, and he examines Strawberry Hill. Walpole's house at Twickenham, where Bentley's genius flourished. He also considers the interplay of the sister arts in the work of Hogarth, Kent, and Pine, and surveys the tastes, friendships, economics, and politics that helped shape the development of Bentley's book illustrations.

One of the more problematic sport spectacles in American history took place at the 1904 World?s Fair in St. Louis, which included the third modern Olympic Games. Associated with the Games was a curious event known as Anthropology Days organized by William J. McGee and James Sullivan, at that time the leading figures in American anthropology and sports, respectively. McGee recruited Natives who were participating in the fair?s ethnic displays to compete in sports events, with the ?scientific? goal of measuring the physical prowess of ?savages? as compared with ?civilized men.? This interdisciplinary collection of essays assesses the ideas about race, imperialism, and Western civilization manifested in the 1904 World?s Fair and Olympic Games and shows how they are still relevant. A turning point in both the history of the Olympics and the development of modern anthropology, these games expressed the conflict between the Old World emphasis on culture and New World emphasis on utilitarianism. Marked by Franz Boas?s paper at the Scientific Congress, the events in St. Louis witnessed the beginning of the shift in anthropological research from nineteenth-century evolutionary racial models to the cultural relativist paradigm that is now a cornerstone of modern American anthropology. Racist pseudoscience nonetheless reappears to this day in the realm of sports.

What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

In Minnesota Made Me, award-winning sportswriter Patrick C. Borzi digs into how growing up or living in Minnesota shaped the careers of the state’s most accomplished athletes.

These new and classic essays, researched and written over a 25-year period, are driven and enriched by the enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion of a scholar still making discoveries about a subject of lifelong fascination. Essays at the center of the collection explore Wharton's textual relationships with authors whom she knew well--especially Henry James but also Paul Bourget, F. Marion Crawford, and Vivienne de Watteville.

All year the half-bloods have been preparing for battle against the Titans, knowing the odds of victory are grim. Kronos's army is stronger than ever, and with every god and half-blood he recruits, the evil Titan's power only grows. While the Olympians struggle to contain the rampaging monster Typhon, Kronos begins his advance on New York City, where Mount Olympus stands virtually unguarded. Now it's up to Percy Jackson and an army of young demigods to stop the Lord of Time.