Paul Howell, a planning consultant and key player in the Montreal Olympic Organizing Committee, offers an insider's perspective on how a vast, complex, expensive, and highly politicized event was organized within the constraints imposed by limited resources, an unyielding deadline, and intense pressures from international and local special interest groups. He looks at both the struggles and what went uniquely right in Montreal, setting the record straight on operations, political involvement, and finance, including details of the well-publicized multi-billion dollar deficit that was misrepresented by the press and misunderstood by the public for decades.