BOOK OF THE WEEK; The compulsion of the Games show

This book, it is claimed on the cover, represents "the finest, most comprehensive publication ever assembled on the history of the Olympic Games."

In terms of Olympic competition, that is not true - David Wallechinsky's epic work, The Complete Book of the Olympics, is unmatched for its depth of information and anecdote.

But Susan Wels's account, brought out to mark the centennial of the modern Olympic movement, has been put together with the same eye for telling detail which vivifies Wallechinsky's work. And in terms of Olympic memorabilia it probably is unmatched, drawing freely on the archives of the Olympic museum in Lausanne.

This official access and the glossy presentation create more than a fleeting impression of an upmarket brochure, featuring Olympic torches, posters, badges and commemorative medals. Instead of being offered for sale, however - ("recreate the spirit of Olympia in your own living room") - they adorn a narrative which moves logically through history. Ancient Games. Summer Games. Winter Games.

The words of Austria's Franz Klammer after he secured the downhill skiing gold medal at the 1976 Winter Olympics, set the tone: "Now I've got everything. I don't need anything else." A sense of the particular, special quality of the Olympic Games is established with a succession of historical examples. As far back as 480BC the Persian general Mardonius, in the aftermath of his victory at Thermopylae, wondered openly where the bulk of the Greek forces were. He was told they were "celebrating the Olympic Games and watching gymnastics and horse contests".

Even in modern times, the Games have exerted the same compulsion, and as one might expect, this history is peopled with those who have become Olympic legend: Wilma Rudolph, the American sprint champion who wore calipers until the age of 11 because of polio; Al Oerter, who secured his fourth discus title in 1968 despite tearing a thigh muscle in a fall just before he threw; Jeff Blatnick, who marked his return from cancer surgery with a wrestling gold at the 1984 Games.

It is, though, a history rather than an encomium. Wels notes the wrangles and disputes and tragedies which have accompanied the Games, from the "poisonous squabbling and alleged jingoism" which marred the 1908 celebrations, to the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at Munich in 1972.

She includes the reaction of the New York Times sportswriter Red Smith to the decision to carry on with the 1972 Games, when he wrote that the Olympic organisers had "ruled that a little blood must not be allowed to interrupt play."

This is, then, a serious attempt to describe the complex elements which have shaped Olympic history. It is a good time to remember as the sporting world limbers up for this summer's 23rd modern Olympics in Atlanta.

Mike Rowbottom