"I always loved running," said Jesse Owens, who as a boy could outrun all his playmates. That blazing speed helped Owens set track records in junior high, high school, and on into college at Ohio State University. At one Big Ten meet, he smashed three world records and tied a fourth in forty-five minutes. By the time Owens competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, people were using words like "express" and "comet" to describe him. Germany's leader, Adolf Hitler, and his Nazi party believed that Jews, African-Americans, and many others were inferior beings. At the 1936 Olympics, Jesse Owens helped prove that Hitler was wrong. Owens won an amazing four Olympic gold medals for the United States in track and field events.

In this biography, Judith Pinkerton Josephson explores the life and career of this famous track and field star. In his later life, Owens inspired others as a popular public speaker and through his work with boys' clubs, Scout troops, and delinquent youths. A man of determination and courage, Jesse Owens rose above the bigotry of the era to become a humanitarian, a friend of youth, and an ambassador of sports.

A well-written absorbing biography of the track legend. The author nicely balances stories about the development of Owens the athlete with details about his personal life and the struggles he faced as an African American . . . one of the strengths of this book is the strong focus that it gives to Owens’s childhood in Alabama and Ohio and his years after his Olympic triumph. Extensive notes follow each chapter . . . The index is excellent.
School Library Journal, January, 1998

The book, which is aimed at middle-grade students, covers well-worn territory in recounting the personal triumphs of Owens on and off the field. This is a heroic story that demands to be shared with each new generation.
Los Angeles Times, Bookshelf For Young Readers, January 29, 1999