The Muhammad Ali Reader - Softcover

Early, Gerald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062233572 ISBN 13: 9780062233578

Publisher: ECCO Press, 2013

Synopsis

From his status as Heavyweight Champion of the World to his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease, Muhammad Ali is a celebrated icon known the world over for his athletic championships and his civic and humanitarian enterprises. Ali has been both underdog and champion, villain and prince, playboy and staunch Muslim, exalted hero and reviled conscientious objector- the very spirit of the 20th Century, (Norman Mailer). Organized by decade and illustrated with sixteen pages of classic photos, "The Muhammad Ali Reader" tells Ali's story in more than thirty essays from a stellar array of authors, athletes, and social commentators, including A. J. Liebling, Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, Pete Hamill, Gary Wills, Hunter Thompson, and Joyce Carol Oates. Floyd Patterson defends Ali's right to criticize the Vietnam War; Malcolm X explains how Ali went from entertainer to threat with his declaration as a man of race; Ali shares some intimate and definitive thoughts in a Playboy magazine interview; and Gay Talese gives us a front seat on a 1996 ride to Cuba where Ali meets up with Fidel Castro. Fascinating and diverse, this collective portrait reveals the many facets of the awe-inspiring, controversial, and beloved man and legend known to all as The Greatest: the one and only Muhammad Ali.

About this title

About the Author

Gerald Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies, and director of the Center for Humanities at Washington University. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the editor of several volumes, including This Is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s; The Sammy Davis Jr. Reader; Body Language: Writers on Sport; Speech and Power; Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation; and My Soul's High Song: The Collected Works of Countee Cullen, as well as the author of The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism; One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture; Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood; and Tuxedo Junction.

Edition details

• Publisher: ECCO Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062233572
• ISBN 13: 9780062233578
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336