RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksMasterfully written ... A must-read for the throngs of students obsessed with someday wearing a stethoscope around their necks.
Clancy Martin
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksUnique ... Martin has been writing on the topic of suicide for years, he has been generous in informally counseling people afflicted with the view that life is nothing more than affliction. In the final chapter, he offers a loving and useful 40-plus-page collection of straightforward advice aimed at people with a flagging will to live ... A riveting and inspiring read for anyone who has had to keep company with the chthonic feeling that the breath of life is a curse.
Todd D. Snyder
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalOne aspect of Ali’s life...has gone unexamined: his long and close relationship with Drew Brown Jr., a pre-eminent trickster and master motivator known to everyone as Bundini ... Todd Snyder, a boxing aficionado and English professor at Siena College in upstate New York, fills the gap, offering fresh insights into Ali’s character along the way ... Mr. Snyder writes lyrically, and his research appears to be impeccable: It’s hard to imagine that anyone has slipped through his interview net. If Bundini has a blemish, it is Mr. Snyder’s inclination to spar with competing Ali chroniclers; he wins these sessions, for the most part, but in the process disrupts the otherwise smooth flow of his story ... [an] affecting portrait...
Andrew R. M. Smith
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... an insightful life study. It illuminates the many ways in which Mr. Foreman has differed from his storied competitors and found a kind of postcareer success that eluded them ... Mr. Smith makes it plain that the man who was once one of the rarest of power punchers is also one of those rare celebrities who seem to have learned from their vast experience.
Mark Kram
RaveThe Wall Street JournalIn Smokin’ Joe, a comprehensive knockout of a biography, Mark Kram Jr. restores Frazier to his rightful place in the boxing pantheon ... The respect and affection Mr. Kram holds for his subject is evident throughout the book, which the author fills with stories of kindness and goodwill ... Mr. Kram keeps his study balanced by not overlooking Frazier’s all-too-human traits ... [a] beautiful book[.]
Josh Rosenblatt
RaveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Rosenblatt knows how to create dramatic tension. He deftly describes the highs and lows of sparring—after a good session he feels like a champ; after a bad one, a chump who ought to stick to rumbling with words. By the middle of the book, the reader wants to flip ahead and see what happens when the pen-pusher enters the cage and comes face-to-face with a younger, better-conditioned combatant determined to do him in with a punch, kick or choke hold ... You cannot learn about combat sports from the inside out unless your ego is invested in winning. That requires the kind of martial baptism that Mr. Rosenblatt puts himself through with the official bout, which he writes about vividly in the final chapter ... He wasn’t just aiming to produce this text—which nevertheless glistens with illuminations about courage and aging. The aim was self-transformation. Win or lose, it was mission accomplished.
William Giraldi
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalThe Hero’s Body offers a wise and thoughtful personal narrative as well as an illuminating portrait of a seductive, if hazardous, American subculture ... some of the most arresting passages in this taut but tender memoir involve the author’s reflections on the loss of his father.
Randy Roberts & Johnny Smith
RaveThe New York TimesOne of the signal contributions of Blood Brothers — a rigorously researched book that gracefully pivots between the world of the ring and the racial politics of the early ’60s — is its excavation of Cassius Clay Sr.’s impact in shaping his son’s views on race, and thereby enhancing the appeal of the Nation of Islam.
