When Cassius Clay stepped into the ring against Sonny Liston in 1964, most sportswriters dismissed him as a loudmouthed nuisance. Six rounds later he was heavyweight champion, and soon after he took the name Muhammad Ali. David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of The New Yorker, traces Ali’s rise from the boxing gyms of Louisville through his epochal fights with Liston and Floyd Patterson.
Along the way he profiles the era’s sportswriters, mobsters, and provocateurs, including Norman Mailer and Malcolm X. The result captures how a brash young Louisville fighter reshaped America’s racial politics and its idea of heroism.
Published 1999
352 pages
$10.96