The Modern Olympics

For more than 100 years, Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France has been glorified as the man who 'invented' the modern Olympic Games. It's not true, says a University of Florida professor. An English physician and a gaggle of 19th century Greeks did more to revive the Games, among them an eccentric philanthropist whose body was buried—per his instructions—in Romania, Albania and Athens, according to David C. Young, a classics professor with a long-standing interest in the Olympics.

David C. Young is a classicist who brings to this already investigated topic a doggedness and enthusiasm that go beyond anything done before. For the community of critical sports historians, this book is a major event.

Indispensable to all Olympic historians... Young is an enthralling writer... exhaustive research.

Young's research is impeccable.

Young has provided us with a carefully researched examination of two important and much misunderstood episodes in Modern Olympic history, the genesis of the most vigorous and successful early attempts to organize Olympic Games in modern context... Far and away themost authoritative and comprehensive portrayal of the subject yet produced... The corpus of research data produced by Young in this study is far beyond admiration, it is altogether staggering.