Customer Reviews

Ring of Hate: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling: The Fight of the Century

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Author, Patrick Myler, a great boxing historian, found himself a great subject: the second Joe Louis - Max Schmeling fight in 1938. Has there ever been a sporting event filled with such natural potential for drama? Max Scheming, the glowering "Black Ulan from the Rhine" promoted by non other that Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels as the shinning example of racially pure German manhood, vs. Joe Louis, the poor black, sharecroppers son from Alabama. Add to this mix the fact the Schmeling had completely dominated Louis in a previous meeting, handing the Brown Bomber his only defeat on his seemingly unstoppable march to the heavyweight championship.

And what a fight it was. There has probably never been such fine destruction machine as was Joe Louis that night. Not even Iron Mike at his best could rival the ruthless savaging that Louis turned loose on the German. Watching a film of it this many years later, it still captures the viewer in a kind of primal terror. It looks for all the world like someone literally being beaten to death. The lack of sound only increases the horror, watching Schmeling screaming silently as Louis delivers body blows. By the end of the fight, Louis had literally broken his back as well as his spirit: Schmeling suffered three fractured vertebra.

The problem I have with the book is that Myler doesn't harness the natural drama of the event. The focus and pace of the book is all wrong, with the fight itself occupying a single chapter in the middle, with the bulk of the book describing the contrasting careers of the two fighters. The author, in fact, seems determined to tell his story without flare. In quoting the great sports writers of the day, like Grantland Rice and Henry Mclemore, Myler hopes to give us an example of the overheated prose of the day. "What such sensitive souls seemed to forget, or chose to ignore, was that Louis was simply doing a job, and doing it to the best of his ability," sniffs the author.

Louis just "doing a job"? Nonsense. Louis often said himself that by the time he climbed into the ring, he hated the German. Further, Louis admitted that Schmeling was the only man he had consciously wished to hurt during a fight. Louis was doing something much more than simply delivering a professional job of boxing. Watch the film of the fight if you ever get the chance. Joe wasn't simply trying to win a boxing contest. He was trying to punish the German as brutally as possible.

What Myler has forgotten in this book is something men like Grantland Rice lived by: readers love drama. Ironically enough, the passages from the old sports writing greats, while included dismissively, are the most passionate and exciting in the book.

So why give it four stars? Because Myler is an extremely worthwhile boxing historian, and he manages to give a very interesting portrait of the two combatants. By books end, Max Schmeling emerges as a man of great integrity and class. He risked much in Nazi Germany, using his status as national sports hero to save many Jewish friends from the death camps, even hiding two Jewish friends in his house during Kristallnacht. When pressed by Goebbels to fire his Jewish manager, Joe Jacobs, he flatly refused.

I learned much about Joe Louis as well. Myler describes all of Louis' well-known flaws: the womanizing, the utter failings as husband and father, the drug addiction, all told without flinching. Yet Myler manages to convey the thing about Joe Louis that was touching as well. He was always flatly honest, whether giving an opponent in the ring credit or admitting his own failings as a father, husband, and ultimately a man.

By the end of their lives, the two former foes were close friends. Schmeling always sent Louis money over the years, through all of Joe's business and tax troubles, and in fact seemed to genuinely love the man who had once broken his back in the ring. Myler missed the mark on the drama of the fight, but the lives of the two fighters he does up very nicely. -Mykal Banta

RING OF HATE AND THE DEVIL'S DECADE

Boxing is much more than a sport. And in a noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the historical implications of boxing, author Patrick Myler, proves that a measured literary approach can still pack a punch. Ring of Hate: Joe Louis, Max Schmeling: the Fight of the Century, takes aim at a world which never existed for most. And for those who knew it, one that is rapidly vanishing.

Ring of Hate is not so much a book about the second fight between champions Joe Louis and Max Schmeling as it is an endeavor to scrutinize an age, through the lives of two super athletes. The fights, though filled with drama and human obsession, were little more than footnotes to the "devil's decade" of the 1930's.

Myler displays, what every student of history should understand, that the lives of two people mean little in this "crazy mixed up world." With Joe and Max awash in the current of their era, the brilliance of the book resides in its simplicity: in essence, Myler brings to life, two simple men who we can understand. They collide during a complex time we cannot. As their story unfolds, the 1930's comes to life.

I learned early on, that the most coveted crown in sports belongs to the entire world; not to a country or even to an individual. The Louis-Schmeling fights drew their subsistence from a global scene dominated by titans. The fighters held center stage for under 40 minutes, during fights which captured global attention. By the time the second contest ended, the international lines of hostility were drawn and Myler shows that the war that followed, at least in part, had its vanishing point in a boxing ring.

Myler takes a world; too big for any of us to fathom and makes it tangible by bringing the drama of their fights to life during the coming war's overture. The result is a patiently balanced look about true champions on a collision course with history. The author explains the fights, the men and their time. The gloves are off throughout and the fighters are portrayed as they were; without committing the error of judging them from the perspective of today. They are placed in the context of history; the historian's most difficult task.

Ring of Hate offers this generation a vivid perception of that troubled moment. Patrick Myler, through the use of a complex dual biographical sketch, weaves the tapestry of an era, as viewed from ringside. He has seized literary fire by having the champions "fight" yet again, for those of us who still wonder how it all happened.

Guy Giamporcaro

I began this book with much trepidation as I prefer Fiction and truly wondered how a fight that took place almost seventy years ago might be able to hold ones interest. The book is superbly done and the author has done an excellent job in researching his material. Although it closely follows the lives of Joe Louis and Max Schnelling, it is a riveting social commentary. The book goes back to the 1920's and follows the lives of the protagonists until their deaths. It is peppered with anecdotes about the womanizing of Louis and goes into his tax difficulties which served to be a major part of his undoing. When World War II broke out, Louis was in the military and Schmelling was accused by some of being a sympathyzer for the Nazi causes. Both men rose to great heights in different ways and they are both credits to their Countries and to themselves. This is a compelling read on various levels and one need not be a fan of the sport in order to appreciate the superb job that has been done by the writer. He comes across as both a Boxing Historian as well as a Social Commentator. This book is highly recommended and is important on many levels.

I found the book to be an excellent look at the lives of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, perhaps slanted towards Max more than Joe in terms of coverage and of interest.

The fight itself is not looked at in great depth at all mainly because it was so short.

A difficult book to write as the reality is that the Match of the Century between both men was pretty much a slaughter.

If I had to nit-pick, I would say that the author didn't grab me with the writing, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just making an observation.