By Doug Berg
A really good book I read this winter was King of the World by David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker.
King of the World is the story of Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali, particularly about his development as a boxer and as a personality who influenced not only the fight game, but politics, religion and the anti-war movement.
Remnick does a masterful job of weaving the various aspects of Ali’s character, the political scene of the time and the conservative vs liberal elements of the sport of boxing in with the buildup to the first Ali-Liston fight in 1964, the fight in which Ali won the championship and established himself as a new force in boxing, a champion not ruled by the mob, a champion with the speed of a middleweight, a champion with a brain, a champion who was his own man.
The book was particularly interesting to me as I was a big fan of Muhammed Ali, but it’s a great story and would be of interest to anyone, I think, with an interest in the 60’s. I’d planned to pass the book along to my dear friend, Norm Garneau, who saw many of Ali’s early fights in Florida and followed his career even more closely than I. But, as readers of Com-Mini-Cations know, Norm passed away in February.