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A. J. Liebling: The Sweet Science and Other Writings

The Sweet Science | The Earl of Louisiana | The Jollity Building | Between Meals | The Press More

Edited by Pete Hamill

“The best single-volume collection of Liebling’s domestic writings that could possibly be put together.” — Terry Teachout, National Review
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“The essential Liebling.”— Fortune

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

Interviews Pete Hamill on A. J. Liebling: The Sweet Science and Other Writings
August 7, 2020

News “I was often alone, but seldom lonely”—Henry Wessells on his pandemic reading
May 13, 2020

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

One of the most gifted American journalists of the twentieth century, A. J. Liebling learned his craft as a newspaper reporter before joining The New Yorker in 1935. This volume collects five books that demonstrate his extraordinary vitality and versatility as a writer.

Named the best sports book of all time by Sports Illustrated in 2002, The Sweet Science (1956) offers a lively and idiosyncratic portrait of boxing in the early 1950s that encompasses boastful managers, veteran trainers, wily cornermen, and the fighters themselves: Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Archie Moore, “a virtuoso of anachronistic perfection.” No one has captured the fierce artistry of the ring like Liebling. “A boxer,” he observed, “like a writer, must stand alone.” A classic of reporting, The Earl of Louisiana (1961) is a vivid account of Governor Earl Long’s bid for reelection after his release from a mental asylum in 1959—and an insightful look at Southern politics during the civil rights era.

The Jollity Building (1962) collects hilarious stories about Manhattan cigar-store owners, night-club promoters, and the scheming “Telephone Booth Indians” of Broadway, as well as a profile of “The Honest Rainmaker,” the racing columnist and confidence man extraordinaire Colonel John R. Stingo. An unabashed celebration of the pleasures of unrestrained eating, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris (1962) is a richly evocative memoir of Liebling’s lifelong love for Paris and French food and wine. The Press (1964) brings together the best of Liebling’s influential “Wayward Press” pieces, in which he perceptively examined the flaws of American journalism and presciently warned of the dangers of consolidated media ownership. “Freedom of the press,” he wrote, “is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

Pete Hamill, volume editor, is the author of twenty-two books, including News Is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century, Why Sinatra Matters, and the novels Forever and North River. He has written columns for the New York Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, The Village Voice, New York, and Esquire, and served as editor-in-chief of both the Post and the Daily News.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Project support for this volume was provided by the Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation.

A. J. Liebling: The Sweet Science and Other Writings is kept in print by a gift from the Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

The Sweet Science

The Earl of Louisiana

The Jollity Building

Between Meals

The Press

Appendix
Anti-Poetry Night
Paysage de Crépuscule

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-040-7 1057 pages

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N° 191 Library of America Series

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