The Complete Book of the Olympics

The Complete Book of the Olympics: Revised Edition


by David WallechinskyPublisher: Penguin Books, 1988
ISBN is 9780140107715 / 0140107711Paperback
7.6 x 9.2 inches, 680 pages + several pages of photos

A compendium of trivia about the Olympic games offers information on all events and their scoring, medal winners since 1896, profiles of legendary athletes, play-by-play accounts, and numerous action photographs--------------------
David Wallechinsky (born David Wallace, February 5, 1948) is an American populist historian and television commentator, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) and the founder and editor-in-chief of AllGov.com and worldfilmreviews.us.

In 1960, Wallechinsky's father took him to the Rome Olympic Games. In 1984, he published the first edition of his work The Complete Book of the Olympics, a reference work with full results and many anecdotes about the modern Games. The book became unwieldy so was later split into two volumes The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics and The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics series. Wallechinsky now shares the editorial duties with his nephew Jaime Loucky. The books led to work for Wallechinsky as an Olympic commentator for NBC.

In 1985, Wallechinsky followed the book previously co-authored with Medved with a sequel, going back to his high school graduation year contemporaries and solely writing a similar retrospective Midterm Report: The Class of '65: Chronicles of an American Generation about pupils from across America who left high school in that year. He interviewed twenty-eight of those 1965 graduates including President Jimmy Carter's son Jack, and Rhode Island's then-congressional Representative Claudine Schneider. It was later published as "Class Reunion '65, Tales of an American Generation," written from the perspective of two decades post-high school graduation. In the book, Wallechinsky noted the profound impact that the war on Viet Nam had on the lives of his interview subjects.

In 1991, he was one of the founding members of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH). He served as treasurer of the organization from 1996 to 2004, vice-president from 2004 to 2012, then served as the organization's president. Wallechinsky is the founder of AllGov.com, which provides news about various departments and agencies of the American government. AllGov describes the functions of each agency, their histories, and controversies, and shares critiques and suggested reforms from both the left and the right.