Floyd Patterson

Floyd Patterson delivered a number of knockout punches during his Hall of Fame career, but it might have been the fights he won outside the ring that made him great. Born in 1935, he overcame poverty and prejudice to become the youngest world heavyweight champion in history--and he would later become the first man to regain the crown after losing it. Muhammad Ali called Patterson the most skillful fighter he ever faced. This first complete biography of the former heavyweight champion covers Patterson's meteoric rise as a boxer while giving equal attention to his life away from sport, including his work as a civil rights activist in the 1960s. Joining Ali and Joe Frazier as boxers who used their celebrity to bring attention to social issues, he became an icon of the movement.

This knockout biography follows boxing legend Floyd Patterson, civil rights activist, national icon, and the youngest man to win the World Heavyweight Champion title, and the first to ever win the title twice.

Discusses the techniques, exercises, skills, and strategies of boxing.

The autobiography of a man, unable to read or write at the age of ten, who became the heavyweight champion of the world.

As a young reporter for The New York Times, in 1961 Gay Talese published his first book, New York-A Serendipiter's Journey, a series of vignettes and essays that began, "New York is a city of things unnoticed. It is a city with cats sleeping under parked cars, two stone armadillos crawling up St. Patrick's Cathedral, and thousands of ants creeping on top of the Empire State Building." Attention to detail and observation of the unnoticed is the hallmark of Gay Talese's writing, and The Gay Talese Reader brings together the best of his essays and classic profiles. This collection opens with "New York Is a City of Things Unnoticed," and includes "Silent Season of a Hero" (about Joe DiMaggio), "Ali in Havana," and "Looking for Hemingway" as well as several other favorite pieces. It also features a previously unpublished article on the infamous case of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt, and concludes with the autobiographical pieces that are among Talese's finest writings. These works give insight into the progression of a writer at the pinnacle of his craft. Whether he is detailing the unseen and sometimes quirky world of New York City or profiling Ol' Blue Eyes in "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," Talese captures his subjects-be they famous, infamous, or merely unusual-in his own inimitable, elegant fashion. The essays and profiles collected in The Gay Talese Reader are works of art, each carefully crafted to create a portrait of an unforgettable individual, place or moment.

With the proliferation of sanctioning bodies giving rise to multiple titleholders in each weight class it has become increasingly difficult to track the history of the World championships in professional boxing. The purpose of this publication is to give the boxing fan an overview of the history of the heavyweight championship of the World. What you will find here is a brief description of how the championship was passed along from John L. Sullivan to the present champion Wladimir Klitschko. Also included is a list of all deserving holders of the championship, and not least a very comprehensive section with a complete list of all World heavyweight championship fights held under the Queensberry rules, including the ones sanctioned by major organizations like NBA, NYSAC – and later WBC, WBA, IBF & WBO. I hope that this publication will be able to help the casual boxing fan to navigate through professional boxing history.

The first book ever to delve into the life of the legendary heavyweight boxing champion. Acclaimed sportswriter Phil Pepe explores the iconic boxer “Smokin’ Joe” Frazier’s early beginnings. From his dirt poor childhood and relationship with his father to his street fights and Olympic boxing championship, Pepe’s book follows Frazier’s rise, culminating in the “Fight of the Century” with Muhammad Ali. Pepe beat all other writers to the punch in his seminal work on the champ nobody knew. Originally published in 1972, now available in ebook format for the first time.