Best Boxing Books Ever Written

The best boxing book ever written was a book of short stories by FX Toole called "Rope Burns, Stories from the Corner". I have given it to a couple of friends of mine in boxing including pros and high ranked amateurs and they all loved it (they weren't big readers). "Million Dollar Baby" was one of the stories in the book but not the best one (maybe "Black Jew" or "Fighting in Philly"). The second best boxing book of all time was "The Professional" by W.C. Heinz. The premise of Heinz's book was that everything must fall into place in order to win a championship (in and out of the ring) and lots of things are not directly within a fighter's control (but how they react is). I read many others, including "Fat City" but thought it was over rated. Does anybody have any others?

A few recent books come to my mind that were amoung the best boxing books I've ready in a while;

The Devil and Sonny Liston - Nick Tosches (The book really paints Sonny as a simpathetic charchter)

A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the roaring 20's - Roger Khan (Awesome book with plenty of infomation about the 1920's and how really huge Dempsey and boxing were at the time)

The killings of Stanley Ketchel,is a absolute classic must read , Black Ajax is great from a historical point of view really intresting , also The Hardest Game , and Dark Trade both superb.:)

It sounds like you are limiting the conversation to fiction. If that's true?

Paul Studahar's collection of "Best Boxing Stories" has some extraordinary writing by ATG writers. The best is the Chickesa Bone Crusher.

Fat City is incredible in terms of both the book and its influence.

Rope Burns was very good.

The Killings of Stanley Ketchell was very good. There's a great scene of Ketchell and Jack Johnson in a brothel after their fight.

In the Best of Joe R. Lansdale there is a story called The Big Blow. Jack Johnson and a great white fighter named McBride fight in Galveston as the Great Hurricane of 1900 wipes out the city.


If you're talking books about boxing as opposed to fictional stuff?

Boxiana by Pierce Egan, The Sweet Science and the Neutral Corner by AJ Liebling, The Hardest Game by Hugh Mcillvaney, Beyond Glory by David Margolick, Facing Ali by Stephen Brunt, This Bloody Mary by Jon Rendell, Dark Trade by Doug McRae, Jeff Silverman's The Greatest Boxing Stories Ever Told, Clay Moyle's biography of Sam Langford, Christian Guidice's of Roberto Duran, Dave Anderson's of SDurgar Ray, Mark Kramm's Ghosts of Manila and anything by Joyce Carol Oates are absolute must reads.

There are dozens of others.

The How to Books by men like Barney Ross and Jimmy Wilde and Dempsey and Gibbons and others are endlessly informative.