Download or read book The Idealist written by George Hirthler and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The IdealistThe inspiring yet tragic story of Baron Pierre de Coubertin,the French visionary who founded the modern Olympic Games.A historical novel by George HirthlerIn its narrative scope, The Idealist spans two centuries, covering the 74 years of Coubertin's life--from his birth in Pairs in 1863 to his death in Geneva in 1937. It reveals how the transformation of Paris into the capital of modernity helped fire a young man's imagination--and how the drumbeats of war sounded by the German hosts of the 1936 Berlin Olympics spoiled an old man's dreams, and left him bereft of hope for the Movement he created to foster peace among nations.When the novel opens in early 1937, Coubertin is 74, he's broke, his health is failing, and although he has created one of the most influential international movements of the 20th century, he is completely unknown outside a small circle of admirers, whose financial help he has repeatedly declined. His wife can hardly withhold her bitter animosity, his son is an insensate abyss of sadness, his daughter in and out of touch with reality, and his great creation is about to fall into the hands of a Nazi madman leading the world to war. But hope begins to rise again when a new ally appears. The narrative is driven by the arrival of Jacques St. Clair from Le Petit Journal in Paris, a fictional but famous sports journalist who moves to Lausanne with his American fiancé, the painter Juliette Franklin, to spend a year writing the Baron's biography. As St. Clair begins to interview Coubertin, his life story unfolds in scenes that flash back and forth between the old man in Lausanne and his memories of the seven decades past. St. Clair and his fiancé become fully immersed in Coubertin's life as she begins to paint a portrait of him--and are deeply affected as his health declines and the race to finish the interviews faces an increasingly impossible deadline.