At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing: A Library of America Special Publication

Named a best book of 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle, At the Fights is a gritty and glittering anthology of the very best writing about boxing. Here are Jack London on the immortal Jack Johnson; Richard Wright on Joe Louis’s historic victory over Max Schmeling; A. J. Liebling’s brilliantly comic portrait of a manager who really identifies with his fighter; Jimmy Cannon on Archie Moore, the greatest fighter of the 1950s; James Baldwin and Gay Talese on Floyd Patterson’s epic fight with Sonny Liston; George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; Norman Mailer on the Rumble in the Jungle; Mark Kram on the Thrilla in Manila; Pete Hamill on legendary trainer and manager Cus D’Amato; Mark Kriegel on Oscar De La Hoya; and David Remnick and Joyce Carol Oates on Mike Tyson. National Book Award–winning novelist Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin) offers a foreword and, in a new preface, John Schulian pays tribute to his co-editor, George Kimball, who lost his battle with cancer in 2011.