Games of Deception: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Germany

James Naismith's mission in life was to bring "young men closer to God through the ministry of athletics." That mission led him to the School for Christian Workers in Springfield, Mass., where he was charged with inventing a game that would "keep restless young men physically active during the long, dark days of winter." The result? Basketball. Readers will need no advance knowledge of the sport to be captivated by Andrew Maraniss's Games of Deception.

The first game of basketball was played in December of 1891. Four decades later, James Naismith was present in Berlin when, amid political unrest and controversy, the sport made its Olympic debut during the 1936 summer games in Nazi Germany. While many in the United States felt the country should boycott, others felt politics had no place in sports. Yet another group believed a boycott was hypocritical: in the U.S. at the time, there was a "whites-only structure" in the amateur leagues as well as in the Olympic tryout systems that was "hardly different from the policies in Germany that prevented Jewish athletes from joining athletic clubs or competing for Olympic teams." Ultimately, the 14 men who made up the original U.S. Dream Team traveled to Berlin. Games of Deception chronicles their experiences--including a gold-medal game against the Canadians in what looked like "a muddy hog pen"--during this monumental period of sports history.

Maraniss's (Strong Inside) meticulous research and exemplary story-telling skills are accompanied by affecting, sometimes unsettling photos from the period, generating a horrifying yet decisively spellbinding glimpse into the beloved sport's roots. With contagious enthusiasm and respect for basketball, Games of Deception brings home the gold. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

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