The Last Protest: Lee Evans in Mexico City

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 360 pages
• Published by: Windsprint Press January 24, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0977382109
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0977382101
• Book Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.1 pounds

Product Review
With his third book, Frank Murphy must be counted with the most perceptive observers of the sport. The literary quality of much writing about track and field is repetitious and cold, but Murphy elevates the competition from the banal to the lyrical.It is Evans, the athletic force, that Murphy captures in The Last Protest. --Cross-Country Journal

This is the story of all-time 400 great Lee Evans and his quest for gold in Mexico City amidst the political and social upheaval of the late '60s. Frank Murphy is one of the best sociohistorians of our sport and his telling of the Lee Evans tale brings the era and the quest of an indomitable athlete to life once again A book that will inspire and enlighten you. --Track and Field News

Heroes and villains 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. 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. --Courier Times

Cross Country Journal
With his third book, Frank Murphy must be counted with the most perceptive observers of the sport.

Reader 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.