Raging Bull: My Story [Paperback]

Jake La Motta (Author), Joseph Carter (Author), Peter Savage (Author), Nick Tosches (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 1997

Meet Jake La Motta: thief, rapist, killer. Raised in the Bronx slums, he fought on the streets, got sent to reform school, and served time in prison. Trusting no one, slugging everyone, he beat his wife, his best friends, even the mobsters who kept the title just out of reach. But the same forces that made him a criminal—fear, rage, jealousy, self-hate, guilt—combined with his drive and intelligence to make him a winner in the ring. At age twenty-seven, after eight years of fighting, he became Middleweight Champion of the World, a hero to thousands. Then, at the peak of success, he fell apart and began a swift, harrowing descent into nightmare. Raging Bull, the Bronx Bull's brutally candid memoir, tells it all—fights, jails, sex, money—surpassing, in hard-hitting prose, even the movie that immortalized it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In prose as straightforward and at times as brutal as his style in the ring, former middleweight champion Jake LaMotta wove together an unforgettable autobiography: first published in 1970, Raging Bull was violent, candid, primitive, smart, and altogether powerful. It still is. His story, adapted for the screen in 1980 by Martin Scorsese in the Oscar-winning film starring Robert De Niro, is filled with anger--at his father for beating him, at the neighborhood he grew up in, at the petty criminal he became, at the Mob that tried to keep him from the title because he wouldn't take a dive--and real candor about the dive he did take (out in the real world when his boxing career was over). While most of LaMotta's anger was self-directed, he harnessed enough of it to power him to 83 victories in 106 fights, and a two-year hold on a championship belt. His recounting of his ring wars with Sugar Ray Robinson and Marcel Cerdan remain as convincingly primal on the page as they were in the arena.

About the Author

Jake La Motta fought 106 pro bouts, winning 83, 30 by KO. He subsequently owned a night-club in Miami and had character roles in several films and TV programs. He lives in New York City.Joseph Carter is the author of a number of books and magazines and worked on the staffs of Newsweek and the New York Herald Tribune.Peter Savage, an actor, producer, and director, is Jake La Motta's boyhood friend.

Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 22, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306808080
• ISBN-13: 978-0306808081
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #389,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Page Turner - More Like A Page Pounder, September 18, 2004

By 

Buster Paris (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Raging Bull: My Story (Paperback)

A Page Turner - More Like A Page Pounder

Reading this book I felt like Sugar Ray Fighting La Motta - couldn't put it down -

OK - that's a stretch, but you get the idea. I could not put this book down. It reads like a bull charges. A little bit of wind up - I'd say the first 19 pages - then it's a charging bull.

Jake's story is much more than what the movie shows and is different.

As we all know and heard so many times - the book is always better than the movie and again it's very true here - the book is Jake's exact story not changed one hair for Hollywood. It's such an intense, real and gritty story.

It starts off in Jake's childhood as a tuff Bronx kid taking a beating from his father and the world - and as he got older the beatings continue and get worse - the biggest beatings coming from himself.

La Motta is brutally honest and doesn't try to hide anything or paint himself in a special light. It's a powerful and straightforward look at his life, his heart and a candid look at the sport of boxing back then.

It's a great book, you'll pound through the pages like a raging bull.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Packs the Same Wallop as La Motta's Ring Punch, December 31, 2001

By 

William Hare (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Raging Bull: My Story (Paperback)

Jake La Motta made a good living punching people in the ring, rising in 1949 to the world middleweight championship. He packs the same wallop in his book "Raging Bull," the basis for the powerful 1980 film which was directed by Martin Scorsese and earned Robert De Niro an Oscar for Best Actor.

La Motta paints a brutally vivid picture of a youngster and young man growing up in a brutal Bronx jungle. The fighter they called "The Bronx Bull" writes about seeing rats in the cellar of the tenament where he grew up that were the size of cats. The neighborhood in which he grew up was so tough that he had thousands of fights, explaining that by the time he laced on gloves and became a boxer such conflict had become totally routine. To La Motta a fight was as commonplace as anyone else brushing their teeth, a simple, elementary part of life. He writes about his early life of crime, including the beating of one man he thought he had killed. In perhaps the most dramatic sequence of the book he reveals how he had lived in morbid fear of being apprehended for murder and in guilt for the act itself, after which he was shocked when the man he was convinced he had killed surfaces. Unaware that La Motta was his attacker, the man surfaces in Detroit to wish the fighter luck as he prepares for his winning title bout against champion Marcel Cerdan of France. The man explains that he was hurt badly but finally recovered, and is in town to wish someone from his old neighborhood luck in his title pursuit.

The raw power of the lightning narrative, along with its brutally realistic truth, makes "Raging Bull" one of the all- time great sports books, a true American classic.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, September 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Raging Bull: My Story (Paperback)

Jake Lamotta's autobiography describes his life from childhood, including reform school, through his career in the ring and a bit beyond. The story is gripping! Lamotta describes not only with brutal honesty, but with true insight, his aspirations, his shortcomings and the effects his actions had on those around him. Equally impressive is the writing style. Even if written with the contribution of others, the style is lucid and riveting and I kept having to remind myself that this is a story written by a (brawling) boxer. It does fade a bit at the end but the book is a clear winner. One of the best sports books I have ever read.