Official Boxing Book Review Thread

[mschatz]

Feel free to add to the list, post your comments if you've read the same book, or suggest titles.





"Body & Soul - Notebooks of an apprentice boxer" by Loïc Wacquant

Follows the author's 3 year journey through the amateur and professional boxing world. He trains out of the now defunct Woodlawn Boys Club in Southside Chicago, home of Hall of Fame coach, DeeDee Armour. DeeDee never made any money in the game, and actually missed his induction ceremony to the hall because he couldn't scrounge up the money to get there. Boxing, as the purest form of sport has always attracted the attention of intellectuals and authors such as Hemingway, Liebling and Oates. One of the differences here is that Wacquant dives in to the training and living conditions of the fighters at the Southside gym. It's an extremely well-written book, and although there is quite a bit of high-brow social commentary, it doesn't detract from the story itself. Some of the passages written about neighborhood gyms, the monotony and discipline of training, the relationship between the trainer and his students really hit home, and reminded me of all the reasons I love the sport of boxing. Very gritty and personal read. 5 stars.

[mschatz]

Nobody found this interesting?

[james123]

Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing by Donald McRae



This is a collection of pieces focussing mainly on James Toney, Roy Jones, Tyson (and others) when they were in their primes in the nineties. Basically, McRae is a journalist who followed various fighters around to glean long interviews from them regarding their lives and perspectives on the fight game. Special attention is paid in particular to Toney, with whom Macrae develops a long friendship during the course of researching and travelling with the fighter for his fights with Thornton, Jones, Griffin, etc. I found it an interesting read when I read it several years ago, but the one drawback I would point out is it's "middlebrowness"; that is, McRae brings a kind of middlebrow, middleclass perspective that I've found often infects the work of nonfighters who write about boxing, like Joyce Carol Oates. (He has a tendency, like Oates, to attempt to wax profound and lyrical about the savage beauty of boxing, especially about how boxing is a "metaphor" for the struggle of man at his most primal, and other pretentious exaggerations. These writers typically do not know much about the technicalities of boxing or the daily regimen of training and things like that, but view boxing from a distance, as a middle-class spectator would.)

Nevertheless, McRae was close enough to the principal personalities in the book to give us some interesting information about the habits of fighters and their idiosyncratic behaviours. (There is an amusing and somewhat touching scene where the author and a resurgent Toney discuss his humiliating loss to Jones while watching promotional videos and other buildup material for the fight. At one point, Toney nods approvingly at footage of himself announcing that he would kick Jones's ass and make him his bitch, etc.)

For those interested, there are also some chapters devoted to Naseem Hamed, de la Hoya, Rafael Ruelas, and Holyfield, though the author didn't manage to get as close to them as he did to Toney.

Another book by the same author (which I haven't read) is

Heroes without a Country


about Jesse Owens and Joe Louis.

[mschatz]

Thank you JAMES!

[Diomedes]

These all sound interesting, especially "Dark Trade." I'll probably pick one of these up when I get the time.

The only boxing "book" I've gotten to lately is Sugar's "Boxing's Greatest Fighters."

It's mostly what you'd expect from Sugar, but there's a lot of good information about fighters from the late 19th, early 20th centuries. Some of these guys I probably never would have heard of if I hadn't read this.

[amhlilhaus]

get all of adam pollacks' books, on john l. sullivan, jim corbett and bob fitzsimmons. you cannot make arguments about these fighters without having the facts which he has compiled in his books.

[Dogstarman]

I just read this one. It's a pretty good book. He discusses his fights and some of his training. He also goes into detail on his fallout with his first promoter Frank Warren. I enjoyed it, be warned it's a very loose style as it sounds like he is talking to you, I think it works in this case.

[mschatz]

"Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice, and the will to survive in American boxing gyms"
Photo's and foreword by Jim Lommason

Great coffee table collector's piece, with an incredible collection of photographs and essays written about the great boxing gyms in America. Its a tribute to the journeyman, the professional sparring partner, and and the gyms themselves in some of the worst neighborhoods in the country. Great essay by Joe Frazier in the beginning. I highly recommend this book to anyone in love with boxing.

[Jeff Clavelle]

i havent been on sherdog much lately and this is the first time i saw this thread. I bookmarked it so I can pick a couple up for when this semester is over.

so thanks for the reviews and info

[GlassJaw]

I'm working on Hands of Stone right now, a review soon to come.