Fight Of The Century

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

The fight for women's suffrage between women's rights leader Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson is creatively presented as a four-round boxing match in this energetic nonfiction picture book. When Woodrow Wilson was elected President, he didn't know that he would be participating in one of the greatest fights of the century: the battle for women's right to vote. The formidable Alice Paul led the women's suffrage movement, and saw President Wilson's election as an opportunity to win the vote to women. She battered her opponent with endless strategic arguments and carefully coordinated protests, calling for a new amendment granting women the right to vote. With a spirit and determination that never quit--even when peaceful protests were met with violence and even when many women were thrown in jail--Paul eventually convinced President Wilson to support her cause, changing the country forever. Cleverly framed as a boxing match, this book provides a fascinating and compelling look at an important moment in American history. Sarah Green's bright, detailed illustrations perfectly accompany award-winning author Barb Rosenstock's captivating narrative.

Advance Praise "The Fight of the Century brings back memories of a different and troubled time both in sports and in our country. It is vividly reported and a perfect example of the old saying that the genius is in the details." --John Feinstein "The Fight of the Century just floats like a butterfly and sings like a canary. Arkush recaptures the period of the late '60s when America was in a quandary about Vietnam, Ali's refusal to be drafted, about Smokin' Joe Frazier's claim on the heavyweight title, and the amazing build-up to this great fight. I saw the fight and remember the intensity in Madison Square Garden; people were fainting in the aisles. The electricity of that fight buzzes through this book." --Phil Jackson "Ali-Frazier I was the greatest sports event I ever saw or ever expect to see. With his landscape portrait of the men and their times, Michael Arkush takes us again to that historic moment in Madison Square Garden when two of boxing's proudest warriors began their blood feud." --Dave Kindred, author of Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship "Arkush not only gives us the inside story on one of the century's signature sporting events, he frames it politically and socially. I was there, and now I know much more about what happened. This is flesh and blood and history." --Robert Lipsyte "The Fight of the Century transcends the mere sports story. In Michael Arkush's capable hands, this classic duel and its surrounding pressures and personalities show us where we have been as a society and where we are going. It is a story that truly stands for a place and time. It is a fully engrossing read." --Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author "Never is a long time, but there'll never be another cosmic boxing event like Ali-Frazier I. Michael Arkush brings alive that melodrama with all its political-social implications, wheeling and dealing, hyping and hitting." --Larry Merchant, author and boxing commentator "A richly detailed history of Ali and Frazier's first big fight and the social and political forces at play. A great read." --Ron Shelton, director of Bull Durham and Tin Cup

The definitive book (The Ring) on one of the greatest sports events of the twentieth century, the heavyweight championship bout between Germany's Max Schmeling and America's "Brown Bomber," Joe Louis. More than the world heavyweight championship was at stake when Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling on June 22, 1938. In a world on the brink of war, the fight was depicted as a contest between nations, races, and political ideologies, the symbol of a much vaster struggle. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels boasted that the Aryan Schmeling would crush his "inferior" black opponent. President Roosevelt told Louis, his guest at the White House, that "America needs muscles like yours to beat Germany." For Louis, this was also his chance to avenge the only loss in his brilliant career-by a knockout-to the same Max Schmeling two years earlier. Recreating the drama of their momentous bout, the author traces the lives of both fighters before and after the fight, including Schmeling's efforts in Nazi Germany to protect Jewish friends and the two boxers' surprising friendship in the postwar years. In Ring of Hate Myler tells the story of two decent men, drawn together by boxing and divided by the cruel demands of competing nations. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

This is a revealing look at the history of race relations in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century portrayed through the lives and times of the first two African-American heavyweight boxing champions, Jack Johnson and Joe Louis. Incorporating extensive research into the black press of the time, the author explores how the public careers and private lives of these two sports figures both define and explain vital national issues from the early 1900s to the late 1940s.

The fight for women's suffrage between women's rights leader Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson is creatively presented as a four-round boxing match in this energetic nonfiction picture book. When Woodrow Wilson was elected President, he didn't know that he would be participating in one of the greatest fights of the century: the battle for women's right to vote. The formidable Alice Paul led the women's suffrage movement, and saw President Wilson's election as an opportunity to win the vote to women. She battered her opponent with endless strategic arguments and carefully coordinated protests, calling for a new amendment granting women the right to vote. With a spirit and determination that never quit--even when peaceful protests were met with violence and even when many women were thrown in jail--Paul eventually convinced President Wilson to support her cause, changing the country forever. Cleverly framed as a boxing match, this book provides a fascinating and compelling look at an important moment in American history. Sarah Green's bright, detailed illustrations perfectly accompany award-winning author Barb Rosenstock's captivating narrative.

Based on more than 500 interviews, including Muhammad Ali's closest associates, and enhanced by access to thousands of pages of newly released FBI records, this is a thrilling story of a man who became one of the great figures of the twentieth century.​

This exciting account of the 1921 heavyweight boxing title fight between champion Jack Dempsey and Frenchman Georges Carpentier relates how it originated and how it became a template for modern sports promotion. Immortalized as the battle of the century by Ring Lardner, the Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight title bout marked America's first experience with the intersection of show business, high society, politics, and the underworld at a single sporting event. The Battle of the Century: Dempsey, Carpentier, and the Birth of Modern Promotion offers the definitive history of this landmark event's genesis and impact. To explain why the fight had such a far-reaching influence on mass entertainment and modern culture, newspaperman Jim Waltzer invites readers to travel the path to the 1921 heavyweight championship. Along the way, they will meet a cast of outsize characters, including the savage defending champion (and alleged World War I slacker) Jack Dempsey, French pretty-boy war hero Georges Carpentier, promoter Tex Rickard, Dempsey's slippery manager Doc Kearns, and Jersey City boss Frank Hague. As the tale unfolds, so does an understanding of the forces that shaped the Roaring Twenties and established promotional hype as the MO of business.