Now in paperback! "From the first page to the last, Klein's prose
retains its powers of enchantment and illumination. It is one of the
best boxing books ever penned." --Boston Globe "[A] muscular,
relentlessly detailed book." --Wall Street Journal "I can lick any
son-of-a-bitch in the world." So boasted John L. Sullivan, the first
modern heavyweight boxing champion of the world, a man who was the gold
standard of American sport for more than a decade, and the first athlete
to earn more than a million dollars. He had a big ego, big mouth, and
bigger appetites. His womanizing, drunken escapades, and chronic
police-blotter presence were godsends to a burgeoning newspaper
industry. The larger-than-life boxer embodied the American Dream for
late nineteenth-century immigrants as he rose from Boston's Irish
working class to become the most recognizable man in the nation. In the
process, the "Boston Strong Boy" transformed boxing from outlawed
bare-knuckle fighting into the gloved spectacle we know today. Strong
Boy tells the story of America's first sports superstar, a self-made man
who personified the power and excesses of the Gilded Age. Everywhere
John L. Sullivan went, his fists backed up his bravado. Sullivan's epic
brawls, such as his 75-round bout against Jake Kilrain, and his
cross-country barnstorming tour in which he literally challenged all of
America to a fight are recounted in vivid detail, as are his battles
outside the ring with a troubled marriage, wild weight and fitness
fluctuations, and raging alcoholism. Strong Boy gives readers ringside
seats to the colorful tale of one of the country's first Irish-American
heroes and the birth of the American sports media and the country's
celebrity obsession with athletes.
