Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage

Budd Schulberg's name rings a bell not only as the author of novel and film master pieces (What Makes Sammy Run?, On the Waterfront, A Face in the Crowd) but as a writer as closely associated with prizefighting as Hemingway was with bullfighting. The first boxing editor of Sports Illustrated, Mr. Schulberg has won every possible writing award this controversial sport has to offer. His novel The Harder They Fall was praised by both Arthur Miller and Gene Tunney as the best novel on the fight game ever written.

In this bountiful collection of his best boxing stories of the last half-century, Mr. Schulberg takes his fans all the way back to an epic bare-knuckle contest in England two hundred years ago; draws a revealing portrait of "Uncle" Mike Jacobs, the promotional impresario of boxing in its Golden Age; expertly places Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali in the social history of their times; brings fans up to date in the careers of the great names of recent decades-Tyson, Holyfield, De La Hoya, Hopkins, "Chico" Corrales; and much more. His prose sparkles with authority and insight. Here is great writing on great fighters, laced with a realistic sense of boxing's wrongs as well as its rights.