Back At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (hardcover)

At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (hardcover)

Foreword by Colum McCann | Fifty writers fascinated by the primal contest inside the ropes and the crazy carnival world outside them More

Edited by John Schulian and George Kimball

“A knockout of a collection. Some of the finest boxing writing—or sports writing, period—I’ve ever encountered.”—Dennis Lehane

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Story of the Week Story of the Week: Red Smith, “I’m the Greatest”
June 17, 2016

News Robert Lipsyte describes how Cassius Clay met The Beatles
June 9, 2016

News Forty years ago, the first Muhammad Ali–Joe Frazier bout, “The Fight of the Century,” linked their legends forever
June 6, 2016

American writers have always been fascinated by the ring—by the primal contest inside the ropes and the crazy carnival world outside them. From back-alley gyms and smoke-filled arenas to star-studded casinos and exotic locales, they have chronicled unforgettable stories about determination and dissipation, great champions and punch-drunk has-beens, colorful entourages and outrageous promoters, and, inevitably along the way, have written incisively about race, class, and spectacle in America. Like baseball, boxing has a vivid culture and language all its own, one that has proven irresistible to career sportswriters and literary essayists alike.

This gritty and glittering anthology gathers a century of the very best writing about the fights. Here are Jack London on the immortal Jack Johnson; H. L. Mencken and Irvin S. Cobb on Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier, the first “Fight of the Century” that captivated the world in the 1920s; Richard Wright on Joe Louis’s historic first-round knockout of Max Schmeling; A. J. Liebling’s brilliantly comic portrait of a manager who really identifies with his fighter; Jimmy Cannon on Archie Moore, the greatest fighter of the 1950s; James Baldwin and Gay Talese on Floyd Patterson’s epic tilt with Sonny Liston; George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; Norman Mailer on the Rumble in the Jungle; Mark Kram on the Thrilla in Manila; Pete Hamill on legendary trainer and manager Cus D’Amato; Mark Kriegel on Oscar De la Hoya; and David Remnick and Joyce Carol Oates on Mike Tyson. National Book Award–winning novelist Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin) offers a foreword.

George Kimball (1943–2011) was a longtime sportswriter (Boston Herald) and the author of Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing. John Schulian was a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Daily News before moving to Hollywood, where he was, among other things, the co-creator of Xena: Warrior Princess. He is the author of Writers’ Fighters and Other Sweet Scientists. Both Kimball and Schulian received the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism, awarded by the Boxing Writers Association of America, and in addition to At the Fights, they co-edited The Fighter Still Remains: A Celebration of Boxing in Poetry and Song from Ali to Zevon.

This special publication features full-cloth binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
News & Views

Story of the Week Story of the Week: Red Smith, “I’m the Greatest”
June 17, 2016

News Robert Lipsyte describes how Cassius Clay met The Beatles
June 9, 2016

News Forty years ago, the first Muhammad Ali–Joe Frazier bout, “The Fight of the Century,” linked their legends forever
June 6, 2016

Video Watch: Sportswriter’s classic portrayal of Muhammad Ali, “the maddest of existentialists,” lives again in new video
June 6, 2016
Table of Contents

Foreword by Colum McCann
Disarming Candor, an Introduction by George Kimball
The Fist and the Pen, an Introduction by John Schulian

Jack London | Johnson vs. Jeffries
Irvin S. Cobb | Cobb Fights It Over Again
H. L. Mencken | Dempsey vs. Carpentier
Heywood Broun | The Orthodox Champion
Gene Tunney | My Fights with Jack Dempsey
Sherwood Anderson | Brown Bomber
Paul Gallico | Pity the Poor Giant
Bob Considine | Louis Knocks Out Schmeling
Richard Wright | High Tide in Harlem: Joe Louis as a Symbol of Freedom
W. C. Heinz | Brownsville Bum
Red Smith | Night for Joe Louis
John Lardner | Down Great Purple Valleys
Frank Graham | As It Was in the Long Ago
A. J. Liebling | Kearns by a Knockout | Ahab and Nemesis
Jimmy Cannon | Archie
James Baldwin | The Fight: Liston vs. Patterson
Gay Talese | Floyd Patterson
Barney Nagler | from James Norris and the Decline of Boxing
Murray Kempton | The Champ and the Chump
George Plimpton | Miami Notebook: Cassius Clay and Malcolm X
Larry Merchant | Beethoven to Boxing
Joe Flaherty | Amen to Sonny
Dick Schaap | Muhammad Ali Then and Now
Norman Mailer | from The Fight
Robert Lipsyte | Pride of the Tiger
Mark Kram | “Lawdy, Lawdy, He’s Great”
John Schulian | Nowhere to Run
Vic Ziegel | Roberto Duran’s New York State of Mind
Leonard Gardner | Sweeter than Sugar
Budd Schulberg | The Fight (The King Is Dead) | from Moving Pictures
Ralph Wiley | Then All the Joy Turned to Sorrow
Pat Putnam | Eight Minutes of Fury
Pete Hamill | Up the Stairs with Cus D’Amato
Pete Dexter | from Paper Trails
Thomas Hauser | from The Black Lights
Bill Barich | Never Say Never: Ray Mancini’s Last Fight
George Kimball | Leonard–Hagler: The Fight and Its Aftermath
Gerald Early | Ringworld
Richard Hoffer | Still Hungry After All These Years
Mike Lupica | Donfire of the Vanities
Joyce Carol Oates | Rape and the Boxing Ring
Jerry Izenberg | My Friend, My Teacher
William Nack | “The Fight’s Over, Joe”
Mark Kriegel | The Great (Almost) White Hope
David Remnick | Kid Dynamite Blows Up: Mike Tyson
Katherine Dunn | The Knockout: Lucia Rijker
Edward Hoagland | from Compass Points: How I Lived
Carlo Rotella | Champion at Twilight
Contributors

Sherwood Anderson
James Baldwin
Bill Barich
Heywood Broun
Jimmy Cannon
Irvin S. Cobb
Bob Considine
Pete Dexter
Katherine Dunn
Gerald Early
Joe Flaherty
Paul Gallico
Leonard Gardner
Frank Graham
Pete Hamill
Thomas Hauser
W. C. Heinz
Edward Hoglan
Richard Hoffer
Jerry Izenberg
Murray Kempton
George Kimball
Mark Kram
Mark Kriegel
John Lardner
A. J. Liebling
Robert Lipsyte
Jack London
Mike Lupica
Norman Mailer
H. L. Mencken
Larry Merchant
William Neck
Barney Nagler
Joyce Carol Oates
George Plimpton
Pat Putnam
David Remnick
Carlo Rotella
Dick Schaap
Budd Schulberg
John Schulian
Red Smith
Gay Talese
Gene Tunney
Ralph Wiley
Richard Wright
Vic Ziegel

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-092-6 517 pages

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