BEYOND THE RING (SPS) - Hardcover

Sammons, Jeffrey T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252014731 ISBN 13: 9780252014734

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1987

Synopsis

Primitive, dangerous, low-paying, crooked, exploitive--boxing, in all but a few cases, offered its athletes very little while taking everything. Why does boxing exist? What accounted for its decades-long popularity? What does its presence on the sport history landscape say about America? 

Jeffrey T. Sammons looks at how boxing reflected the society that fostered it at different points in history. In the time of John L. Sullivan, the sport provided an arena for testing law, order, and social growth. Jack Johnson's career reflected the racism, nationalism, and xenophobia of the Progressive era. At its popular peak in the 1920s, boxing expressed tensions as disparate as the tug-of-war between modernism and tradition and the women's rights movement. From there, Sammons traces how the sport intertwined with Nazi antisemitism, reflected the hopes of the New Deal, produced the seminal figure Joe Louis, and stood at the nexus of the union of organized crime with business and television. Finally, he shows how Muhammad Ali and reactions to him exposed the shifting tides of racial issues and American involvement in Vietnam.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey T. Sammons is a professor of history at New York University. He is the coauthor of Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality.

Reviews

Sammons, a history and Afro-American studies scholar, presents a social history of boxing in America. He weaves the contributions of John L. Sullivan, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson, etc.mostly heavyweightsinto an account of a sport blighted by brutality, racial prejudice, corruption, and criminal exploitation. Though the author's overemphasis on black Civil Rights gives short shrift to the struggles of other ethnic strains to rise through boxing, this is a well-presented, appealing narrative that merits comparison with Joyce Carol Oates's less detailed On Boxing ( LJ 1/87). For college and large public libraries.Morey Berger, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252014731
• ISBN 13: 9780252014734
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 318