Overview

In an era scarred by Jim Crow laws at home and fascist spectacle abroad, Jesse Owens rewrote the limits of speed, grace, and human possibility-without ever uttering a word of protest. Track of Defiance tells the complete, rigorously factual story of how a sharecropper's son from Oakville, Alabama, sprinted his way into the conscience of a divided world. From barefoot races on red-clay roads to four gold medals in Hitler's Berlin, Owens's journey is reconstructed with unprecedented detail and clarity-each meet, each result, each injustice faced and moment earned. This immersive narrative traces Owens's physical development under mentors Charles Riley and Larry Snyder, chronicles his confrontation with America's own segregated hypocrisy, and reveals how biomechanics, psychology, and sheer resolve aligned for a single day in Ann Arbor that changed sport forever. Drawing from meet programs, timing sheets, press coverage, and personal correspondence, the book avoids speculation and myth in favor of a clean, evidence-based narrative that allows the reader to walk beside Owens, stride for stride. Spanning from 1928 to his death in 1980, with a century's reflection in the epilogue, this is the definitive account of the athlete whose legacy refuses to slow down.

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9781923525931

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