When Jesse Owens was 13 years old the track coach, Charles Riley, at his new school saw his legs and knew he had the potential to be a great runner. He started coaching him and by the time Jesse was in high school he was breaking world records for his age group. This biography tracks Owens running career, with focus on his performance at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Schapp spend almost the whole second half of the book talking about the controversies of that event, focusing on Hitler's attempt to use the games to promote his belief in Aryan superiority, which was totally thwarted by the amazing performances of Owens and his teammates. Owen's life after the Olympics is only covered briefly in an afterward.
Here is another book offered through Libby for the 250th anniversary of the country. It is an interesting and well written biography of a person who broke race barriers just by being mild mannered while also being the best in the world at what he did. Schaap's writing style is engaging, even as he uses and refers to a lot of sources, like newspaper articles and letters to carefully document Owen's story. Owen's comes across as an admirable and likeable person. Schapp mentions but doesn't dwell too much on the prejudice Owen had to face to achieve what he did. It seems like the message is that if you are good enough, almost everyone will focus on what you can do rather than on your race. (304 p. 2008)
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