The Bible Of The Games

My newest Wallechinsky is perched in prime position on the end of my coffee table, awaiting the next lighting of the flame.
And so, the countdown to the Beijing Olympics can now officially begin.
If you are any kind of Olympic junkie, you know you can't approach any Games — Winter or Summer — without David Wallechinsky's definitive work by your side. I speak, of course, of The Complete Book of the Olympics, and while expecting any tome to live up to such lofty billing, I can say with great confidence that Wallechinsky's effort surely does.
This is a compendium that is purely staggering in its scope, an 1,182-page behemoth that does much more than just offer a compilation of results. Rather, every single event from every games since the first of the modern era (1896 in Athens) gets an anecdote of its own. Some are rather brief, others amazingly detailed and not always about who won and who lost.
It is truly the kind of book meant to be devoured in small bites, rather than all at one sitting. And, for any fan of the Games, it's something you'll no doubt find yourself lured back to again and again.
Wallechinsky was first introduced to the Olympics when his father, novelist Irving Wallace, took him to the 1960 Rome Summer Games. He has gone on to become one of the world's more foremost Olympic historians, one who's received the Olympic Order from the International Olympic Committee.
His first volume of The Complete Book of the Olympics, published in 1984, weighed in at a modest 628 pages. It covered both the Summer and Winter Games, though the latter rated only a small 66-page segment at the back end of the book. Things, obviously, have grown greatly in the six follow-up editions published since then.
When the IOC moved to an alternating format in 1994, it spawned a secondary series: The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics. The fourth edition, for the 2006 Turin Games (when Wallechinsky brough his nephew, Jaime Loucky, on board as a co-author), gave readers 312 pages of storytelling and more.
As the years — and the Games — continue to roll on, the scope of the books will continue to grow.
Count on me to keep adding every volume to my collection.