Customer Reviews

The Last Protest: Lee Evans in Mexico City

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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.

The Last Protest: Lee Evans in Mexico City is the best running-related book I have ever read. Frank Murphy does a masterful job weaving running, race relations, and olympic politics into a seamless narrative. I recommend this book to anyone interested in running, track and field, civil rights, race relations, or 1960s America. Just a truly fabulous book by a gifted author.