Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Remnick is smart enough not to contribute just another Ali biography to the shelves, and instead focuses his efforts on Ali 1960 - 1965...from his post-Olympic days through to the second fight with Liston. These are the years when Ali became Ali...the champ at the height of his powers.

But there's a special bonus in this book - a good portion of it deals with Sonny Liston. You talk about your seminal 20th Century characters. They don't get any more interesting than this guy: the abused son of a sharecropper, long stretches of imprisonment, a fight career directed by mob interests, a violent death. In short, a writer's dream. Remnick brings Liston together with Floyd Patterson (and you'll never find a greater constrast) and walks you through these two battles before turning his attention to Ali. Thus, you get a full portrait of Liston prior to encountering the force of nature that was then Cassius Clay.

The effect is a curious sympathy that you have for Liston as he enters the maelstrom developing around Ali. In most retellings, Liston is cast as the personification of evil. Remnick made me see him in a different light.

My advice for a great Ali study program:

1. Watch 'When We Were Kings' [Best documentary ever]

2. Read 'The Fight' by Norman Mailer

3. Read 'King of the World'

4. Buy any book featuring Howard Bingham's photography of Ali.

This is a great writer that can be appreciated by the boxing fan and non fan alike. At times the narrative is a bit choppy. But in the end this style adds to the reader's enjoyment as the usual biographical methods become enhanced. The title and cover pic are a little misleading : while Ali is clearly the focus much space is given to (and much is learned about) Liston, Patterson and most interestingly, the whole boxing culture....Bottom line : A great book.

I'm a big boxing fan, and am fascinated with both Muhammed Ali, how he evolved from Cassisus Clay, and Sonny Liston. There's a lot of great boxing writing, however, and I thought every angle of these two had already been covered, both in facts and in their roles as mythic figures. So it was with great pleasure (and surprise) I found David Remnick's book so terrific. Besides learning new facts that only a good investigative reporter could dig up 35 years after the fact, the book read like a great story. The prose really flowed, but not in a pretentious way that took away from the subjects, and I think even non-boxing fans would enjoy the tale of when these two tragic men (though Ali wouldn't become tragic for decades)met to fight for the heavyweight crown. I plan on buying a hardcover for my boxing book collection (a shelf I'm VERY discriminating about.)Thanks David Remnick!

I've come to be a fan of Ali later in life, way after his career was over. I never saw him fight in his prime. How I became acquainted with him was through Thomas Hauser's biography. Which spans Ali's life from birth to the present. He tells Ali's story through anecdotes of the people who surrounded him throughout his life and those who just knew him through certain events. Hauser's book is so complete and tells the story from so many different angles that the author of this book, David Remnick, cited Hauser many times in his own book. This book goes through a hundred or so pages before you even get to Ali's career and stops after the Patterson fight (basically right before the Foreman and Frazier fights). Ali's life from the Patterson fight forward is glossed over quickly in the epilogue. To his credit, Remnick relates his moments spent with the champ poignantly, but these moments were few and far between. After taking another look at the book's title I should have figured that it's about Ali's rise to prominence and not his career.

The Titans Reigned Supreme

Fantastic book - more than just the Ali Story -

This is one of the best-written and thought out books of the happenings amongst a small circle of the greatest heavy weights.

You get a rare insight into the lives and minds of Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay - and the awakening/becoming of Muhammad Ali

I went into this book wanting to feed my hunger for knowledge of Muhammad Ali and came out of with a craving for more Sonny Liston - I now want to know all I can about him.

Only a brief period in time is covered - but it's an in-depth look at that time and the people and the places that made up boxing and some of the world outside boxing.

This is a great book for anyone interested in these titans - for anyone interested in Patterson, Liston and Ali - for anyone interested in the history of legends.

One of the best books I've experienced - I truly felt like I was there at times - in that era - that energy of the people and the times

This is one of those books where you wish there was a part 2

David Remnick's biography of Muhammad Ali covers not just the career of one extraordinary fighter, but the widely encompassing sweep of his historical time. The book begins by sharply examining heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson and the unique qualities he brought to the America of his day, a quiet, soft spoken man who carried himself with dignity. Remnick then traces the rocky road to the championship for Sonny Liston, which was achieved after a stop at a federal penitentiary. Liston longed for acclaim from the public, and hoped he would get it after dispatching Patterson in their 1962 title fight in Chicago. A restless, brooding man, Liston would move from St. Louis, to Philadephia, then west to Denver and ultimately Las Vegas.

Ali's brash behavior in demanding a shot at Liston's title was part calculated strategy, part show business, boosting his recognition level all the while, building on the name value he began achieving after winning a gold medal in the light heavyweight class at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Eventually his loud bravado would convince Liston that he was actually crazy.

When Ali won the title from Liston in 1964 in Miami Beach many boxing authorities and fans thought his win a fluke. He then defeated Liston in a controversial rematch in Lewiston, Maine, a one round knockout many believed resulted from Liston lying down on the job. Remnick disagrees, quoting Ali's trainer Angelo Dundee and others in accepting that Liston happened to walk into a well-placed blow that traveled a short distance, but was substantial enough to accomplish its objective. Remnick also points out that Liston bore the fate of reaching the title after his prime, and might well have achieved a longer, more far reaching destiny as champion had the fates been kinder.

The high point of Remnick's dramatic account of a highly colorful American figure arrives when he tackles Ali's refusal to be drafted into the Army. Remnick does an excellent job of presenting and analyzing with sharp critical intelligence the forces at work during the sixties who admired Ali's stand along with those who opposed it, some of whom bitterly hated him. He does an excellent job of describing how African-Americans reacted to Ali as a fighter and a man, particularly at the critical moment when he stood up to political forces who sought to pressure him to be drafted into the Army during the highly controversial Vietnam War.

This is a book that provides a sociological panorama of Ali and his time. As such, this broad landscape is an invaluable work which enhances reader understanding of a controversial period of American history.

David Remnick delivers a terrific biography of Muhammad Ali with "King of the World," but this book should never be mistaken for a conventional sports biography. It is also social history and a compassionate yet realistic portrait of America's guiltiest pleasure: the seamy, yet somehow sometimes heroic world of professional boxing.

The first thing that struck me when I read the book is that its first section discusses Muhammad Ali (or Cassius Clay) very little. Instead, Remnick focuses on the two boxers who helped to gave shape to Ali's legend: Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston. The former was a reluctant champion from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, and Remnick brings Patterson's reticence and self-doubt into full view. The latter was a street thug from an impoverished rural background, a vision of America's deepest fears about African-Americans.

Remnick details Liston's two devastating first-round demolitions of Patterson and illuminates the complicated relationship the public had with Liston. On the one hand, he was despised because of his criminal background and ties to the mob; on the other, Remnick makes clear, he was comforing because he confirmed stereotyped perceptions of black men. One of Remnick's great accompishments in the book is to humanize Liston without in the least diminishing his surly and even hateful demeanor.

With Liston the controversial heavyweight champ, the loud, abrasive, seemingly self-confident Cassius Clay, of Louisville, Kentucky, stepped into the national spotlight. Remnick displays the future champion in all his complex glory: his braggadocio, his complex relationship with white people, including his trainer and doctor, his innate intelligence that was paired with his lack of formal schooling, his ability to manipulate the press, and so on.

Interwoven into his story of how Cassius Clay literally created his life and legend and became the man we know as Muhammad Ali is excellent social history on the civil rights movement and Ali's relationship with the Muslims, including Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. It is not surprising for those of us who grew up in the '60s that sport was so mixed up with politics in Muhammad Ali's day and that he was a key figure in shaping politics. Those who do not remember the time, however, may find it enlightening to realize that there was once an athlete who paid dearly for his political beliefs: Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from the ring for four years for his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Remnick brings all of this vividly to life. He manages, in a bare 300 pages, to meld sports, politics, and history into a story that unfolds like a great heavyweight fight. Must read.

Perhaps I am not the best person to review this book as I am not a boxing fan at all, rather a person who appreciates good non-fiction and character studies. I picked up this book based on other reader reviews and the fact that that Time magazine named it the Best Nonfiction book of the year. The title of this book, as mentioned by other reviewers, is somewhat misleading as the book is only in part about Muhammad Ali. This book is more of a history about the era in which Ali became the champ. It is a well written account of Ali's association with the Black Muslim's and Malcolm X. It is also an informative account of the other famous fighters of his time and before. While the book is not a "gripping" book it certainly holds the interest of the reader. Surprisingly, after reading it I found myself less of a fan of Ali's than before,which may be the best evidence that the book is an honest account of the era.

David Remnick's "King of the World" is one of the best sports biographies ever written. Rarely has an athelete done as much to define his generation or been more controversial than Ali. Hard to believe today, with all of the adoration heaped upon Ali, but he was once a hated figure. This book chronicles his rise up until the time he refused to be drafted for the Vietnam War. Most surprising are the details about his involvement with the Nation of Islam and how that involvement both ruined his first marriage and caused him to turn his back on his great friend, Malcolm X. This book is for sports fans and anyone else interested in reading about an extrodinary life.

This book was fascinating. I remember the grown-ups talking about these fights when I was a kid. I knew they were a big deal, but I didn't know why. Now I do. Mr. Remnick has illuminated the times and the political/racial atmosphere in which these fights took place. I found the short biographies of Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston especially enlightening. It's surprising to read how loathed Ali was at the time. And how lucky he was! If the first Liston fight hadn't been postponed because of Ali's hernia... when Liston had really trained and was ready... well, who knows? This has been the best sports book I've read in years, and I can't recommend it highly enough. What a wild ride!