In recent years, a growing body of academic literature has analyzed the role of international sport, including the Olympic Games, in the Cold War. Philip A. D’Agati's book contributes to this field of enquiry by looking at why the Soviet Union (and most of its allies) chose to boycott the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The author reexamines the traditional assumption that Soviet non-participation was a direct and inevitable consequence of the Carter administration's boycott of the Moscow Games four years previously, in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. D’Agati provides an alternative interpretation to this “tit-for-tat” reasoning, instead suggesting that the boycott was a consequence of a complex series of considerations within an overarching “surrogate war” between the United States and the USSR, and drawing on the bidding process (and subsequent hosting) associated with the 1976, 1980, and 1984 Olympics in particular.
D’Agati's methodological framework combines a relatively straightforward...