Product Description

Perhaps no other figure in recent history has had the wide-reaching impact of the man many know simply as The Greatest. For four decades Muhammad Ali has been a symbol of honesty and strength in sports, politics, religion, and civil rights. Throughout his remarkable career, Ali was one who truly had to be seen to be believed. But while Ali's achievements have frequently been chronicled in prose, never before has his extraordinary career been documented in images. Muhammad Ali: Ringside is dedicated to one of the most popular athlete-entertainers of all time. Included are vintage posters and programs, fight tickets, handwritten letters, classic photographs, speeches, scorecards, contracts, and rare autographs, all from Ali's personal memorabilia. Divided chronologically into four sections, one for each decade from the 1960s to the 1990s, the book includes written narrative recountings of Ali's accomplishments by noted writers and entertaining quotes from Ali's contemporaries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1511019 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

Amazon.com
How do you capture an icon? If the icon is The Greatest, some knockout prose, knockout photography, and a knockout presentation certainly helps. Ali gets all of that in Ringside, a beautiful celebration of a remarkable talent. But it's something else that gives the book its distinct flavor: short, sharp testimonies woven throughout the book that come from the folks who knew Ali, fought him, and observed him. The book's centerpieces--long selections from Alex Haley, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and Peter Richmond--attest to the enormous shadow Ali cast. It's the smaller reflections, though, that capture his controversial greatness. Witness Floyd Patterson, the former champ Ali twice humiliated in the ring: "I came to love Ali. I came to see that I was a fighter and he was history." Witness basketball legend Bill Russell: "I still envy him. He has something I have never been able to attain and very few people I know possess. He has an absolute and sincere faith." Witness Joe Frazier, second-billed in three enormous ring dramas: "I hate Ali.... Twenty years I've been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart and send him back to Jesus." Witness writer Pete Hamill: "His fights resembled some bloody offshoot of ballet."

Ali has always inspired the wordsmiths, and he's always inspired the people, and you can taste that inspiration on every page here. Artfully assembled and generously illustrated with photos of Ali, Ali memorabilia, and Ali artifacts--fight posters, tickets, even the media betting pool for the famed "Rumble in the Jungle" and the X-ray of his jaw after Ken Norton broke it--Ringside is aptly named. It's a front-row seat to an amazing story. --Jeff Silverman

About the Author
Editors Aaron Kenedi and John Miller run Big Fish in San Francisco, packaging books for Bulfinch Press, Chronicle, and Rizzoli. Big Fish has created more than fifty art and literary books, including Lovers: Great Romances of Our Time, Legends (with Anjelica Huston), San Francisco Stories, and Paul Gauguin's Noa Noa.

Customer Reviews

WHAT?!
This is out of print?! You have GOT to be kidding me. That just isn't right, my friends. This isn't very old, for one thing, but more importantly it's a fantastic book on a popular topic. Who on earth let it go out of print?

Well, whatever. All I can say is, get ahold of a used copy somewhere if you can. Anyone who is a fan at all of Ali's career or just of boxing in general should read this. The articles by the likes of Norman Mailer, Alex Haley, and Joyce Carol Oates are priceless, and the photographic recap of his career is stunning. I especially enjoyed the wealth of images of his fight posters. These are an underappreciated little art form, and there have been some great ones for Ali fights.

To his fans: Track this down. To the publisher: Get this back in print! Before I sting you like a bee!

Great Muhammad Ali book for Youngsters!
The pictures are exciting and the while the reading is difficult, older students could do it. Many students admire Muhammad Ali and the photos will please their eyes and the information will soothe their minds. Ali didn't have a sex scandal, and his arrest was inappropriate and overturned by the Supreme Court. He is an exciting person that kids can look up to.

Light & Refreshing
This book could not be called anything more than a brief introduction to the subject. Basically there are five essays by five different authors. First an introduction by James Earl Jones, then four more essays, one each for the 60's, 70's, 80's & 90's. All are relatively brief but each has it's own focus and tone, which is nice. The book does not talk at all about the three Ali-Frazier fights, and is pretty thin about the things it does talk about, so in no way could it be considered comprehensive. In fact, a majority of the book's substance is in pictures and snappy quotes. This leads to a book that is "light and refreshing" - which is its strength. Finally, this is not a critical book; all the contributors are definitely fans of Ali.

For someone very familiar with the subject, this is probably not the book for you. For me, I enjoyed the book.