Doping is as old as organized sports. From baseball to horse racing, cycling to track and field, drugs have been used to enhance performance for 150 years. For much of the history of drugs in sport, doping to do better was expected. It was doping to throw a game that stirred outrage. Today, though, athletes are vilified for using performance-enhancing drugs. Damned as moral deviants who shred the fair-play fabric, dopers are an affront to the athletes who don't take shortcuts. But this tidy view of the story of doping in sport swindles sports fans. While we may want the world sorted into villains and victims, putting the blame on athletes alone ignores decades of history in which teams, coaches, governments, the media, scientists, sponsors, sports federations, and even spectators have played a role. The truth about doping in sports is messy and shocking because it holds a mirror to our own reluctance to spit in the soup―that is, to tell the truth about the spectacle we crave. In Spitting in the Soup , sports journalist Mark Johnson explores how the deals made behind closed doors keep drugs in sports.  In this gripping history of doping in sports, Johnson unwinds the doping culture from the early days, when pills meant progress, and uncovers the complex relationships that underlie elite sports culture―the essence of which is not to play fair but to push the boundaries of human performance. It's easy to assume that drugs in sports have always been frowned upon, but that's not true. Drugs in sports are old. It's banning drugs in sports that is new. Spitting in the Soup offers a bitingly honest, clear-eyed look at why that's so, and what it will take to kick pills out of the locker room once and for all. "Like an action-packed thriller you might read at the beach, Mark Johnson's historical look at doping is a page-turner." -- Canadian Cyclist Magazine "From the birth of the modern Olympics to the invention of amphetamines, Johnson touches on just about every aspect of history and culture in last century. Regardless of what side of the doping line you stand on, prepare to find out how wrong you are." -- Adventure Cyclist magazine "Hard-hitting, comprehensive, and highly readable." -- Pez Cycling News "A dose of Gladwellian counter-intuitive paradigm-shifting, challenging your perception of today's anti-doping system." -- Podium Cafe, Top 10 Cycling Books of 2016 "May go down as the most important book on doping ever written...A stunning education, one that has dashed previous beliefs and begun to frame doping and our attitudes on it as part of the evolution of human thought. It's a fantastic work." -- Red Kite Prayer "A great summation of the history of drug use in sports. Johnson uses academic rigor combined with a journalist's grind-it-out research and solid, accurate writing to give us a fast-moving history." -- Boulder Daily Camera "Riveting." "Gives us a much more balanced view of how we've come to the way we view drugs in sports today." -- Diane Jenks, The Outspoken Cyclist Radio Show "A magnificent new book....A treasury of info about drugs in sports." --Peter Ney, author of Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing "A fine book. I was not sure one person could wrestle such material into a single narrative. However, Johnson pulled it off with grace and talent. I am impressed. This will certainly be a book I use in my courses and recommend to all interested parties." -- John Gleaves, Professor of Kinesiology, California State University Fullerton and Co-Director for the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research DON'T HATE THE PLAYER. HATE THE GAME. The history of doping in sports is one of good versus bad. Or so the story goes. Truth is, athletes have doped to do their jobs since the dawn of organized sports. But cleaning up drug-soaked sports has been a mission at odds with the spectacle-hungry interests of advertisers, Olympic organizers, governments, reporters, and fans, none of whom want to spit into sports' nourishing broth of money, power, and national pride. In Spitting in the Soup , Mark Johnson traces the shocking trail of hypocrisy that belies the tidy myth of clean athletes fighting corrupt deviants. Journalists spin false claims about amphetamines and EPO. Cold War governments treat anti-doping as an inconvenience. Olympic organizers dismiss the pursuit of clean sports as a budgetbreaking nuisance. And U.S. lawmakers tie themselves in knots to enrich snake-oil supplement makers while railing against performance-enhancing drugs as a stain on the American Way. Spitting in the Soup is an eye-opening tour through the ethical, social, and economic clamor that arises from our ongoing efforts to create a sporting island of chemical purity in the midst of a drug-dependent world. Mark Johnson is a sportswriter and sports photographer. He has covered cycling and endurance sports since the 1980s. Along with U.S. publications like VeloNews and