King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero

On the evening in 1964 that Muhammad Ali (then generally known as Cassius Clay) stepped into the ring with Sonny Liston, he was extensively thought to be an irritating freak who danced and talked manner an excessive amount of. Six rounds later Ali was not solely the brand new world heavyweight boxing champion: He was “a brand new type of black man” who would shortly rework America’s racial politics, its standard tradition, and its notions of heroism.

        

Nobody has captured Ali–and the period that he exhilarated and generally infuriated–with larger vibrancy, drama, and astuteness than David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of 
Lenin’s Tomb (and editor of 
The New Yorker). In charting Ali’s rise from the gyms of Louisville, Kentucky, to his epochal fights in opposition to Liston and Floyd Patterson, Remnick creates a canvas of unparalleled richness. He offers us empathetic portraits of wisecracking sportswriters and bone-breaking mobsters; of the baleful Liston and the haunted Patterson; of an audacious Norman Mailer and an enigmatic Malcolm X. Most of all, 
King of the World does justice to the pace, grace, braveness, humor, and ebullience of one of many best athletes and irresistibly dynamic personalities of our time.