In Cold War Games, Toby Rider discusses the use of the Olympic Games as a form of propaganda during the 1950’s as the Cold War began to ramp up.
Rider does a really good job of giving readers new to the topic the background information on the Olympic Movement and the use of psychological warfare techniques by the US during previous times of conflict. It’s both interesting and gives the reader the background necessary for reading the rest of the book.

While the title might suggest some massive, shadowy effort by clandestine US government organizations to use the Olympics and American athlete success against the Soviet Union as Cold War propaganda that’s actually very subdued to non-existent. Rather the efforts while clandestine strike me more as governmental-private partnerships with fairly connected individuals using government ties when needed to achieve some aim such as resettling refugees.

This book is about the early Cold War spending a great deal of time on the Olympics that took place during the 1950s. With this said, I think that later events such as the boycott in 1980 by the United States deserved a little more than the quick mention it received towards the tail end of the book since the United States clearly was aiming to make a political point in doing it.

Still Rider’s work on the early Cold War Olympic Games is a valuable contribution to the links between political propaganda and athletic events.