Extremely rare Spalding's Official Athletic Almanac for 1905. New York: The American Sports Publishing Company. Custom-bound hardcover lettered in gilt with the owner's name ("J. Taylor"), 5.25 x 6.75, 284 pages plus advertisements in the rear. In very good condition, with a tape-repaired tear to the title page, and ownership inscription ("James A. Taylor, Captain Columbia, Track Team 1905") to first free end page.
Given that no official report was published by the Olympic organizing committee, the Spalding's Official Athletic Almanac for 1905, compiled and edited by James Edward Sullivan, served as one of two 'unofficial' reports for the 1904 St. Louis Games; the other report being Charles Lucas's The Olympic Games, 1904. The Spalding Almanac of 1905 includes supplementary photographs and advertisement pages, with pages 11-154 covering non-Olympic sporting events. Of considerable interest is a section documenting the controversial Anthropology Days event held on August 12-13, some two weeks before the opening ceremony. Indigenous men from around the world, attending the World's Fair as part of the Department of Ethnology exhibits, participated in physical displays alongside cultural presentations as a means for anthropologists to see how they compared to their white counterparts. A notably uncommon 'official report' of the Third Olympiad.
