At The Fights

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 501-505) and index.; Features literary excerpts and articles written by sportswriters and authors that celebrate one hundred years of American boxing. Table of Contents: Foreword / Colum McCann -- Disarming Candor, an Introduction by George Kimball -- The Fist and the Pen, an Introduction by John Schulian -- Johnson vs. Jeffries / Jack London -- Cobb Fights It Over Again / Irvin S. Cobb -- Dempsey vs. Carpentier / H. L. Mencken -- The Orthodox Champion / Heywood Broun -- My Fights with Jack Dempsey / Gene Tunney -- Brown Bomber / Sherwood Anderson -- Pity the Poor Giant / Paul Gallico -- Louis Knocks Out Schmeling / Bob Considine -- High Tide in Harlem: Joe Louis as a Symbol of Freedom / Richard Wright -- Brownsville Bum / W. C. Heinz -- Night for Joe Louis / Red Smith -- Down Great Purple Valleys / John Lardner -- As It Was in the Long Ago / Frank Graham -- Kearns by a Knockout / A. J. Liebling -- Ahab and Nemesis -- Archie / Jimmy Cannon -- The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston / James Baldwin -- Floyd Patterson / Gay Talese -- From James Norris and the Decline of Boxing / Barney Nagler -- The Champ and the Chump / Murray Kempton -- Miami Notebook: Cassius Clay and Malcolm X / George Plimpton -- Beethoven to Boxing / Larry Merchant -- Amen to Sonny / Joe Flaherty -- Muhammad Ali Then and Now / Dick Schaap -- From the Fight / Norman Mailer -- Pride of the Tiger / Robert Lipsyte -- Lawdy, Lawdy, He's Great / Mark Kram -- John Schulian: Nowhere to Run -- Roberto Duran's New York State of Mind / Vic Ziegel -- Sweeter than Sugar / Leonard Gardner -- The Fight (The King Is Dead) / Budd Schulberg -- From Moving Pictures -- Then All the Joy Turned to Sorrow / Ralph Wiley -- Eight Minutes of Fury / Pat Putnam -- Up the Stairs with Cus D'Amato / Pete Hamill -- From paper Trails / Pete Dexter -- From The Black Lights / Thomas Hauser -- Never say Never: Ray Mancini's Last Fight / Bill Barich -- Leonard-Hagler: The Fight and its Aftermath / George Kimball -- Ringworld / Gerald Early -- Still Hungry After All These Years / Richard Hoffer -- Donfire of the Vanities / Mike Lupica -- Rape and the Boxing Ring / Joyce Carol Oates -- My Friend, My Teacher / Jerry Izenberg -- William Nack / The Fight's Over, Joe -- The Great (Almost) White Hope / Mark Kriegel -- Kid Dynamite Blows Up: Mike Tyson / David Remnick -- The Knockout: Lucia Rijker / Katherine Dunn -- From Compass Points: How I Lived / Edward Hoagland -- Champion at Twilight / Carlo Rotella -- Sources and Acknowledgments -- Index. Publisher Marketing: American writers have been fascinated by the ring, both the primal contest inside the ropes and the crazy carnival world outside them. From neighborhood gyms and smoke-filled arenas to star-studded casinos and exotic locales, they have chronicled unforgettable stories about determination and dissipation, about great champions and punch-drunk has-beens, about colorful entourages and outrageous promoters, and, inevitably along the way, about race, class, and violence in America. Like baseball, boxing has a vivid culture and language all its own, one that has proven irresistible to career journalists and literary writers alike. The Library of America presents a gritty and glittering anthology of a century of the very best writing and reportage 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, dubbed "The Fight of the Century"; Richard Wright on Joe Louis's historic victory over Max Schmeling; A. J. Liebling's brilliantly comic portrait of a manager who really identifies with his fighter; Jimmy Cannon on the inimitable Archie Moore; James Baldwin and Gay Talese on the haunted Floyd Patterson; 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") weighs in with a foreword. Review Citations: Booklist 03/01/2011 pg. 11 (EAN 9781598530926, Hardcover) New York Times Book Review 06/05/2011 pg. 9 (EAN 9781598530926, Hardcover) New York Times Book Review 06/12/2011 pg. 30 (EAN 9781598530926, Hardcover) Wilson Public Library Catalog 01/01/2013 pg. 867 (EAN 9781598530926, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Kimball, George George Kimball spent 25 years as a sports columnist for the "Boston Herald" and in 1986 received the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism. He has covered more than 350 title bouts, and is the author of "Only Skin Deep "and "Sunday's Fools," He lives in New York City. Contributor Bio:  Schulian, John John Schulian is the author of "Writers' Fighters and Other Sweet Scientists," the writing in which has been compared to that of Red Smith and A. J. Liebling. His widely anthologized work has been included in "The Best American Sports Writing 1994," ten editions of "Best Sports Stories," and "Sports Illustrated's Fifty Years of Great Writing."Contributor Bio:  McCann, Colum Colum McCann is the author of books including "This Side of Brightness", "Zoli", "Songdogs "and "Let the Great World Spin". He has received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, and was named the first winner of the Grace Kelly Memorial Foundation Award and the Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He lives in New York City.