The Great Prize Fight

Alan Lloyd recreates the fight that was boxing's first world championship. It took place in Hampshire on April 17th 1860 when Britain's foremost fighter, Tom Sayers of Camden Town, fought the American favourite, Tom Heenan, for a prize of £200 and the winner was heralded the world champion. The Great Fight was the sensation of its time.

An Irish immigrant, a collection agent for crime bosses, a professional boxer, and a prodigious gambler, John Morrissey was -- if nothing else -- an unlikely candidate to become one of the most important figures in the history of Thoroughbred racing. As a young man, he worked as a political heavy in New York before going to San Francisco in search of fortune at the height of the Gold Rush. After returning to the east coast, he was hired by Tammany Hall and was soon locked in a deadly rivalry with William Poole, better known as "Bill the Butcher." As time went on, Morrissey parlayed his youthful exploits into a remarkably successful career as a businessman and politician. After establishing a gambling house in Saratoga Springs, the hard-nosed entrepreneur organized the first Thoroughbred race meet at what would become Saratoga Race Course in 1863. Morrissey went on to be elected to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and two terms in the New York State Senate. In The Notorious John Morrissey, James C. Nicholson explores the improbable life of the man who brought Thoroughbred racing back to prominence in the United States. Though few of his contemporaries did more to develop the commercialization of sports in America, Morrissey's colorful background has prevented him from getting the attention he deserves. This entertaining and long-overdue biography finally does justice to his astounding rags-to-riches story while exploring an intriguing chapter in the history of horse racing.

DigiCat presents to you this meticulously edited collection of the world's greatest novels and stories with religious theme and spiritual messages: Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri) Paradise Lost (John Milton) The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan) Zadig (Voltaire) Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Lew Wallace) Quo Vadis (Henryk Sienkiewicz) In His Steps (Charles M. Sheldon) The Story of the Other Wise Man (Henry Van Dyke) The Ball and the Cross (G. K. Chesterton) The Enchanted Barn (Grace Livingston Hill) The Grand Inquisitor (Fyodor Dostoevsky) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche) Faust (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) The Holy War (John Bunyan) Callista: A Tale of the Third Century (John Henry Newman) Martyr of the Catacombs: A Tale of Ancient Rome (James De Mille) The Temptation of St. Anthony (Gustave Flaubert) Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Mark Twain) Lord of the World (Robert Hugh Benson) The Child of the Dawn (Arthur Christopher Benson) Where Love is There God is Also (Leo Tolstoy) Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert (John Henry Newman) The Uncalled (Paul Laurence Dunbar) The Swamp Angel (Prentice Mulford) The Revolt of the Angels (Anatole France) The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain) The Sorrows of Satan (Marie Corelli) Satan's Diary (Leonid Andreyev) Lilith (George MacDonald) Grace (James Joyce) The Student (Anton Chekhov)