King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780375702297)

The bestselling biography of Muhammad Ali--with an Introduction by Salman Rushdie

On the night in 1964 that Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) stepped into the ring with Sonny Liston, he was widely regarded as an irritating freak who danced and talked way too much. Six rounds later Ali was not only the new world heavyweight boxing champion: He was "a new kind of black man" who would shortly transform America's racial politics, its popular culture, and its notions of heroism.

No one has captured Ali--and the era that he exhilarated and sometimes infuriated--with greater vibrancy, drama, and astuteness than David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lenin's Tomb (and editor of The New Yorker). In charting Ali's rise from the gyms of Louisville, Kentucky, to his epochal fights against Liston and Floyd Patterson, Remnick creates a canvas of unparalleled richness. He gives us empathetic portraits of wisecracking sportswriters and bone-breaking mobsters; of the baleful Liston and the haunted Patterson; of an audacious Norman Mailer and an enigmatic Malcolm X. Most of all, King of the World does justice to the speed, grace, courage, humor, and ebullience of one of the greatest athletes and irresistibly dynamic personalities of our time.

Author: David Remnick
ISBN-10: 0375702296
ISBN-13: 9780375702297
Publisher: Vintage
Language: English
Published: 10/05/1999
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 8.01h x 5.24w x 0.72d

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 7.6
Point Value: 18
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 25925 / King of the World


Review Citation(s):
New York Times 10/10/1999 pg. 36
Ingram Advance 10/01/1999 pg. 47 - Best Of The Best/Highly Recommended