The First London Olympics 1908 Author:Rebecca Jenkins In 1908, a group of volunteers took just 18 months to transform a 140-acre site of scrubland in West London into the White City, which housed the first ever Olympic Games in London. Though the differences between today’s games and those a century ago are many, as this delightful social and sporting history shows, just as today the sport was ov... more »ershadowed by doping scandals and international uproar. The ferocious competitiveness of a US team dominated by New York Irish Americans led to a succession of scandals culminating in the historic marathon when Italian runner Dorando Pietri’s heroic efforts at the limits of exhaustion so entranced on-lookers that track officials helped him across the finish line. Illustrated with more than 70 contemporary images this is a thought-provoking look at one of history’s most raucous sporting events.« less