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BOOK REVIEW:
*****
A page turner about track and field? Even better. A page turner
about one man's trials and triumph, May 29, 2006
Reviewer: Craig Kenworthy (Bozeman, MT) - See all my reviews
Circle a track once. Fast as you can. Faster than anyone. Do that as
your country asks'What are you?' 'Who are you with?'
If the 400 meter run is magic, Frank Murphy is a magician of a writer.
He tells the story of Lee Evans, a quarter miler running for the U.S. at
the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. The Olympics where raised fists caused
fits. Heroes and villians stride through Murphy's story, but better
still, there are people captured in time, making choices without
certainty as to their impact, only as to the justness of their cause.
For those who lived in that era, The Last Protest is a fresh look at men
America asked to bring home gold medals, display them when asked, but
not ask too much for themselves.
For those who only remember seeing a photo of two men, gloved hands
clenched above them, the book is a way to understand them by
understanding one man that circled that track.
The race sequences alone are worth the price of the book. Murphy writes
with a novelist's voice, drawing you along with Evans as he runs through
the duties he accepts and the distractions he endures. He places those
battles in the context of this era "There was a time when a black man
driving from one end of a southern state to the other, Alabama for
example or Louisiana, would pack a lunch and carry his drink in a
thermos."
This is history writ well.
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