The Sweet Science

"A boxer like a writer must stand alone." So does this book. It is quite simply a love song to boxing, boxers, and the fans. I am one of the last. From youngsters boxing in Manchester, England (their mothers were the wildest thing with their shouts) to underground fights between corporate executives......more

The Sweet Science ranks number one on the Sports Illustrated best books of all time list. The book collects some of A.J. Liebling's boxing essays from The New Yorker . Liebling writes in a dry and sarcastic style, and even without knowing or caring much about boxing in the pre-Cassius Clay era of th......more

You can't go too far into books about fighting without running into this one over and over. Like a lot of older books, you can feel the vintage on this one. For me, it's about three things: Descriptions of people, descriptions of places, and a careful catalouging of what everybody is eating. The firs......more

I resisted reading this book, just because, as a lover of boxing and literary journalism, my tendency is to love books I don't hear praised much, and to find myself underwhelmed by canonized classics. I never liked Leonard Gardner's "Fat City" or W.C. Heinz's "The Professional," but I loved Ralph Wi......more

It's a science not as sweet as developmental biology and genetics on account of their use of various honeys and syrups in experimentations, but the science of bruising the faces of fellas is pretty sweet indeed. I liked how one part of the book has a man go into an open box surrounded by ropes and t......more