Live Fast Die Young The Life And Times Of Harry Greb

Live Fast, Die Young tells the story of Harry Greb, the Pittsburgh Windmill, one of the most feared boxers in history. Greb terrified champions and contenders across three weight divisions for nearly a decade. Greb would become famous for fighting anyone regardless of size or race. Prior to his untimely death he harbored a long standing ambition to challenge for legendary heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey's title despite rarely weighing over 165 pounds. Along the way he won the world middleweight championship, American light heavyweight championship, and became the only man to defeat Dempsey's eventual conqueror Gene Tunney. Greb would become one of those outrageous characters that made the Roaring Twenties roar. It is a story that could only be found in the history pages of early 20th century America. He was born the son of an immigrant father who fled Germany one step ahead of the law and a first generation mother in Pittsburgh at a time when the city was helping to usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. The rugged, hard-working men who surrounded Greb during his formative years influenced a toughness and work ethic that carried him to the highest levels of one of the most unforgiving sports. As Harry gained fame and fortune he witnessed the world devolved into chaos as World War I broke out, the passing of Prohibition, the birth of the Jazz Age, and the Golden Age of Sports. Throughout these historic events Harry often found himself right in the middle of things and happy to be there. The author tells the story of one of the most colorful periods in history and one that period's most colorful and unforgettable characters in Live Fast, Die Young: The Life and Times of Harry Greb.

Offers accessible and informative essays about the social impact and historical importance of boxing around the globe.

The legendary Harry Greb stepped into the ring more than 300 times from 1913 to 1926, defeated opponents who outweighed him by more than 30 pounds, held the middleweight and light heavyweight titles and beat every Hall of Fame boxer he ever fought. Dubbed “the Pittsburgh Windmill” because of his manic, freewheeling style in the ring, Greb also crossed racial lines, taking on all comers regardless of color. An injury in the ring led to Greb’s gradually going blind in one eye and should have ended his career, but he kept his condition secret and fought on. Tragically, the indomitable fighter would be dead by the age of 32, felled by complications during minor surgery. This biography of one of the toughest boxers of all time includes interviews, family recollections, modern doctors’ analyses of Greb’s eye injury and more than 120 rare photographs, as well as a complete fight record and round-by-round descriptions of his most famous fights.

Jess Willard, the "Pottawatomie Giant," won the heavyweight title in 1915 with his defeat of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion. At 6 feet, 6 inches and 240 pounds, Willard was considered unbeatable in his day. He nonetheless lost to Jack Dempsey in 1919 in one of the most brutally one-sided contests in fistic history. Willard later made an initially successful comeback but was defeated by Luis Firpo in 1923 and retired from the ring. He died in 1968, largely forgotten by the boxing public. Featuring photographs from the Willard family archives, this first full-length biography provides a detailed portrait of one of America's boxing greats.

Schmeling's heavyweight championship bouts with Joe Louis in the late 1930s were great fights, but they were also political events--Louis, an American black, versus the German Schmeling, a representative of Hitler's master race. At 92, Schmeling may be the last living person to have conversed with Franklin Roosevelt, Hitler, Pope Pious XII, and Marlene Dietrich. It's all here, in this detailed account of the boxer's life through the end of World War II. Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is the way time has altered the boxer's point of view. When he lost the second Louis fight, he thought it was the most devastating event of his life. But now he realizes that, had he won that fight, he would have become the paramount symbol of Hitler's Third Reich. Though he was a patriot, Schmeling could not reconcile himself to Hitler's racial and religious persecution. This is a fascinating, humble autobiography, of interest as much for the times in which the subject lived--and the people he knew-as for the subject himself.

This is a cradle-to-grave biography of Mickey Walker, former welterweight (1922-1926) and middleweight champion (1926-1931) of the world, one of the greatest fighters in ring history. He fought at a time when boxing was a major sport with only eight championships, and he held two of them over a nine-year period. He fought at a time when each weight division was jammed with good fighters, and he fought them all from welterweight up to heavyweight, frequently being outweighed 20 to 30 pounds. Walker was also a great personality who loved life and lived it to the fullest. He was married seven times to four different women, and he cavorted with movie stars and mobsters. When his boxing career ended in 1935, Walker ran saloons in various locations and eventually became an artist of some standing. He died in 1981 at age 79.

Boxing promoter J Russell Peltz fell in love with boxing when he was 12, saw his first live fight at 14, and was hooked for life. He was named Outstanding Male Journalism Graduate, Temple University, 1968, but after a short career on the sports copy desk of the Evening and Sunday Bulletin in Philadelphia, he became a boxing promoter when he couldn't land the boxing beat at the newspaper. In his more-than-half century in boxing, Peltz has promoted fights at every major venue in Philadelphia as well as most of the casinos in Atlantic City. His fights have been televised by ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, Showtime, ESPN, USA and SportsChannel. He has promoted or co-promoted more than 30 world championship fights and his business has taken him around the world, from Beijing to Buenos Aires and from Paris to Tokyo. Peltz was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004, the Temple University School of Communications and Theatre Hall of Fame in 2010, and the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame in 2020.