Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship [Paperback]

Dave Kindred (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2007

Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell were must-see TV long before that phrase became ubiquitous. Individually interesting, together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different -- young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate and Cosell an editor of his university's law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: Both were, above all, performers who covered up their deep personal insecurities by demanding -- loudly and often -- public acclaim. Theirs was an extraordinary alliance that produced drama, comedy, controversy, and a mutual respect that helped shape both men's lives.

Dave Kindred -- uniquely equipped to tell the Ali-Cosell story after a decades-long intimate working relationship with both men -- re-creates their unlikely connection in ways never before attempted. From their first meeting in 1962 through Ali's controversial conversion to Islam and refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army (the right for him to do both was publicly defended by Cosell), Kindred explores both the heroics that created the men's upward trajectories and the demons that brought them to sadness in their later lives. Kindred draws on his experiences with Ali and Cosell, fresh reporting, and interviews with scores of key personalities -- including the families of both. In the process, Kindred breaks new ground in our understanding of these two unique men. The book presents Ali not as a mythological character but as a man in whole, and it shows Cosell not in caricature but in faithful scale. With vivid scenes, poignant dialogue, and new interpretations of historical events, this is a biography that is novelistically engrossing -- a richly evocative portrait of the friendship that shaped two giants and changed sports and television forever.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran sportswriter Kindred seeks to "recover Muhammad Ali from mythology and Howard Cosell from caricature" with interlocking portraits that trace the rising careers of the boxer and the sportscaster to their first meeting in the early 1960s and then through the creation of one of television's most popular bantering couples. Their on-air playfulness didn't necessarily translate into full friendship. Kindred carefully notes that while Cosell supported the heavyweight champion's right to refuse induction into the army during Vietnam, he never expressed support for Ali's actual position. Likewise, Ali knew exactly how the relationship benefited them, once telling Cosell, "You know you need me more than I need you." Kindred's close relationships with both men inform the story without overwhelming it, and he depicts the moments at which he was not present—Cosell's early battles with anti-Semitism in the broadcast industry, Ali's fear that the Nation of Islam would kill him the way they did Malcolm X—with the same immediacy he brings to his eyewitness perspective. There are already many books on Ali, but few independent considerations of Cosell, and none that show so effectively how each man helped create the legend surrounding the other. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Their differences are glaring: Muslim and Jew, black and white, pretty and ugly. But look deeper, and their odd friendship makes sense: Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali shared loud mouths, humble beginnings, relentless ambition, and healthy egos. Although Ali's life has been biographied to death, his relationship with Cosell has never received its due until now. Kindred, who knew both Ali and Cosell well, has written a book that is at once well researched, pleasantly anecdotal, and remarkably insightful. For example, rarely before has Ali's struggle over whether to serve in the army been portrayed so well. And Cosell's life story is absolutely gripping, particularly his remarkable midlife career move from lawyer to broadcaster. But the best thing about the book is the friendship itself. Cosell, who knew nothing about boxing until he was nearly 40, quickly recognized Ali's brilliance inside and outside of the ring. And Ali teased Cosell but respected him in a way that most of Cosell's ridiculers didn't. Even if the shelves are sagging with books about Ali, room should be made for this approachable, touching, and altogether fascinating buddy comedy. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743262123
• ISBN-13: 978-0743262125
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #840,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #47 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( A ) > Ali, Muhammad

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling social history told through sport, March 2, 2006

By 

Timothy S. Hays "A reader in Westchester County" (Westchester County, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship (Hardcover)

For those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, The Sound and Fury is a wondrous re-telling of the period through the lives of two unlikely partners, Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali. It is not a boxing book. It is a work of social history, responsibly reported and told. Dave Kindred's superior writing and interviewing have made a book that should last for many years. The tales of Cosell's and Ali's lives, each up-from-bootstraps, and their accidental friendship, will impress even the most jaded sports fans and grownups.

I could not stop reading this once I began.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars May your hands always be busy, April 2, 2006

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship (Hardcover)

May your feet always be swift,

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift.

May your heart always be joyful,

May your song always be sung,

May you stay forever young,

Forever young, forever young,

May you stay forever young.

Bob Dylan's song, Forever Young, serves as one of Dave Kindred's melodic themes in his wonderful book, "Sound and Fury". Sound and Fury is a biography of Muhammad Ali, Howard Cosell, and the relationship between them.

Sound and Fury carries the reader along as Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, and Howard Cosell, born Howard William Cohen, burst like stars upon the public's imagination in the 1960s and takes them through their respective heydays and then to their inevitable fading away.

Kindred, a sportswriter for close to forty years, began his newspaper career at The Louisville Courier in Muhammad Ali's hometown. He covered Ali since his earliest days, his glory days. It also seems he was one of the few print reporters that Howard Cosell respected and liked. They stayed in close touch with each other until Cosell's death. But, although it is quite clear that Kindred admires and respects both men, and with feelings toward Ali that are powerfully affectionate, even loving, Sound and Fury is no hagiography.

The book takes us quickly through Ali and Cosell's early days. As Kindred alternates between Ali and Cosell's struggle for success in their respective fields one can see the similarities between the two, particularly a single-minded determination to achieve their goals. Ali and Cosell came together in the public imagination after Ali's conversion to the Nation of Islam and his decision to refuse induction into the Army after being (finally) classified as draft-eligible. Ali's famous line "I ain't got nothing against them Viet Cong" made him something of a marked man. Ali was stripped of his title, denied the right to box, and convicted of draft evasion, a conviction later overturned by the Supreme Court. Cosell was one of the few to stand up Ali and it was this stand that helped make Cosell as controversial as Ali. Kindred does an excellent job covering the evolution of the symbiotic relationship between the two men. Kindred points out that Cosell was always very careful never to endorse Ali's views about religion or the war in Vietnam. Rather, Cosell always made it very clear that he argued only that Ali had a fundamental right to hold those opinions and no one had the right to deprive him of a livelihood simply because he held unpopular views.

Kindred, for all his respect and admiration for both men, is quick to point out those instances in which Ali and Cosell acted badly. Ali's treatment of his original religious mentor, Malcolm X, after Malcolm was tossed from the Nation of Islam and then killed is covered as is his brutal and unfair characterization of Joe Frazier (calling him less than a man and an Uncle Tom when in fact Frazier had grown up in greater poverty and experienced more racism than Ali had). Kindred does not hesitate to take Cosell to task for his vaunted insecurity and his callous treatment of those around him, particularly print journalists whom he considered to be inferior beings. Kindred's coverage of Cosell's stormy tenure on Monday Night Football is both informative and balanced.

Kindred is at his finest in describing the twilight of each man's career, Ali's descent into a Parkinson's syndrome induced shell of his former self and Cosell's withdrawal into retirement, seclusion after the death of his beloved wife Emmy, and eventual death. Kindred comes close to capturing that which cannot truly be captured: the ineffable feeling of loss that someone experiences when time has passed them by. This feeling must be particularly intense in the case of those who once were the center of worldwide (Ali) and national (Cosell) attention.

That indescribable notion is set out in the second melodic theme that marks "Sound and Fury". Cosell's favorite poem, one he recited at length with or without prompting, was Keats' Ode to a Nightingale and one which Kindred cites often in his book. If Dylan's Forever Young serves as a theme for Ali and Cosell's early days, Keats' Ode serves as a mournful and extraordinarily apt coda.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Dave Kindred has written a wonderful account of Ali and Cosell and their lives spent at the intersection of sports and the media. It will satisfy sports fans and non sports fans alike. It was a great read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cosell and Ali-Media darlings, July 11, 2006

By 

Bennet Pomerantz "Bennet Pomerantz, AUDIOWORLD" (College Park, Maryland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship (Audio CD)

Sound and Fury (14 hours, 11 cds, unabridged, Blackstone Audio) is a duel biography of Howard Cosell and Mohammed Ali.

Sport writer Dave Kindred knew both men, he has written a bio that transcends his knowledge of both men. His text is an honest, no hold barred , warts and all biography. When a third person (like Kindred) writes a biography, he tends to put his personal touches with his own bias, this book is NOT that.The book showed an unlikely partnership created by media hype.

In the audio narrative hands of Dick Hill, this audio project seems more like a docudrama in its scope. Hill's narrative voice takes on verbal personas of Cosell and Ali, without mocking them. His talent has grown from the days at Brilliance Audio.

Sound and Fury is an amazing production . . . you won't forget it audio, long after you heard it

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD