Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics

Something in the Air is Richard Hoffer’s gripping sports narrative that tells the individual stories of the athletes who gathered in Mexico City in 1968, a year of dramatic upheaval around the world. Racial tensions were high on the U.S. Olympic team, where inflamed black athletes had to choose between demands for justice, on the one hand, and loyalty to country, on the other.

Although basketball star Lew Alcindor (later to become the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) decided not to participate,...