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Chris Jones

365 days, 7 fights, 4 Kos, 3 decisions, 2 scandals, 1 missing ear, 1 wild yearChris Jones did not know what he was getting himself into.  He looked for a sport to call his own when he was hired as a rookie reporter.  He found boxing.  Over the course of the year that followed, the dark trade would creep deeply inside him, set his heart pumping one minute and break it the next.  Make him stare at violence and dare him not to flinch. In Falling Hard, Jones proves himself to the latest in a line of lyricists to be drawn into boxing's storied corruption plagued world.  He gets dressed down by Don King, meets the troubled guy who found Evander Holyfield's ear, goes to Muhammed Ali's birthday party, and witnesses Naseem Hamed explode while Mike Tyson implodes.  Falling Hard is in equal measure victory and defeat - an intoxicating mix that leaves Jones addicted to boxing's special brand of pain. Humorous, infuriating and suspenseful, this is boxing distilled to its essence by sports writing's brightest star.

Falling Hard

Paddy Doherty

'I fight hard and love strong. I'm a traveller.' 
 
Paddy Doherty loves his life as an Irish traveller, but as a child he felt like an outsider. He was different to his siblings. On the rare occasions he went to school, he was bullied for being a gypsy boy. And beyond the gates of the camp he found nothing but hostility. 
 
Slowly, Paddy's hurt turned into anger and by the age of 11 he had started out on an illustrious career in bare-knuckle fighting. This earned him a position as one of the most well-respected (and feared) men in the travelling community. Yet while he won countless contests in the ring, the real battles he faced were very much outside. 
 
In this deeply honest autobiography, he tells of how he has loved and lost five children; plummeted to seven stone while battling depression, drink and drugs. He describes how it feels to be shot point-blank in the head and the lengths he'll go to to protect his people, as well as life since My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and Big Brother. 
 
Told with all the warmth and humour he is famed for, Paddy's rich and colourful story is one that will stay with you for a long time to come.

Hard Knocks & Soft Spots

Kellie Harrington

Roddy Doyle

THE PHENOMENAL MEMOIR OF A NATIONAL TREASURE 
 
After Kellie Harrington won gold at the Tokyo Olympics, the Irish public recognized her as not merely a sporting hero, but a deeply inspirational human being. Now, Kellie tells the story of her unlikely journey to the top, and of the many obstacles and setbacks she overcame along the way. 
 
Growing up in Dublin's north inner city, Kellie was in danger of going down the wrong path in life before she discovered boxing. The local boxing club was all-male and initially wouldn't let her join, but she persisted. 
 
She was not an overnight success. For years she struggled in international competition. At times she felt unsupported by the national boxing set-up. More than once she considered giving up the sport. But some spark of ambition and love for boxing kept her going, and gradually she made herself world class. 
 
Writing with Roddy Doyle, the award-winning author of The Commitments, Kellie tells the story of her unlikely rise to greatness and her continuing dedication to living a normal life - which has involved remaining an amateur boxer and keeping the job she loves, at a Dublin psychiatric hospital. She shares exceptionally vivid and revealing details about being a woman in a historically male sport, and about how she manages her body and her mind. It is a vastly inspiring look inside the life and psychology of a woman who is both brilliantly ordinary and utterly exceptional.

Kellie

Nick Tosches

"[Night Train] is as much about Liston and boxing as it is about the darkest side of the American Dream. Liston's story comes alive though clean, evocative prose, hard facts and lyrical, occasionally breathtaking writing"  Time Out

Night Train

A Biography of Sonny Liston

F X Toole

'Ring magic is different from the magic of the theatre, because the curtain never comes down - because the blood in the ring is real blood, and the broken noses and the broken hearts are real, and sometimes they are broken forever. Boxing is the magic of men in combat, the magic of will, and skill, and pain, and the risking of everything so you can respect yourself for the rest of your life.' 
 
In this dazzling collection of stories F.X. Toole exhibits the skill of a miniaturist: in precise and exquisite detail, he peoples a world rich in unforgettable characters. At the same time he brings a new understanding to the violence and purity of the sweet science, opening a window into the fighter's soul.

Million Dollar Baby

Ramla Ali

Ramla Ali's life inside and outside the ring represents her ruthless refusal to quit and passion to fight for what she believes in. 
 
In her first book, Ramla details ten key fights - a combination of life's constant challenges and real bouts she's endured both in and outside of the ring - that have shaped her remarkable rise to date. 
 
From her arrival in England as a refugee to being drawn to the energy and spirit of her first boxercise class; from the adrenaline of her first amateur fights to how she often powered on alone, searching for a community of women like her, and her biggest win of all: letting love into her life. 
 
Each relatable lesson is packed full of honesty and urgency, powering the reader on to become their own champion.

Not Without a Fight: Ten Steps to Becoming Your Own Champion

Jimmy Stockin

Martin King

Martin Knight

Everyone is familiar with the gypsy race but few outside their close-knit and ancient community really know what being a gypsy is about -how they live and how they think. This is the story of a gypsy man, Jimmy Stockin, born into a world where fighting is first nature. Whilst football maybe the chosen sport for most British males, bare-knuckle fighting is a passion among gypsies both as participants and spectators. Jimmy was born into fighting family. His father and grand-father before him 'trod the cobbles' and young Jimmy was being put up against other boys on gypsy camps from the age of five. He took on bare knuckle challenges from wherever they came. Before long Jimmy was widely recognised as the champion of the bare-knuckle fighters. On the Cobbles is a rare insight into a community under threat - a community that treasures tradition - and a man who had little choice in becoming a fighter but was nevertheless determined to be the best. Shocking and sad, humourous and brutal, this story opens the door to a different world. The world of a gypsy warrior.

On The Cobbles

Jimmy Stockin: The Life Of A Bare Knuckled Gypsy Warrior

Thomas Myler

In Boxing's Hall of Shame, Thomas Myler tells the inside stories of the real fight game. He reveals the sport's heroes and villains, mobsters and fixers, its shame and sorrows, providing the reader with a ringside seat at boxing's greatest and most controversial contests along the way. 
 
This no-holds-barred volume includes the enraged Mike Tyson taking a chunk out of Evander Holyfield's ear; Roberto Duran's baffling retirement against Sugar Ray Leonard; the Riddick Bowe-Andrew Golota fiasco that ended in an ugly full-scale riot; Sonny Liston - whose mobster background was not unknown to boxing authorities - going down under Muhammad Ali's phantom punch; and Jake LaMotta's botched dive against Billy Fox, which turned the 'Raging Bull' into boxing's bad boy overnight. 
 
Boxing's Hall of Shame sensationally revisits the boxing scandals, the fixed fights and the powerful influence of the underworld, taking the reader behind the scenes of the glove sport to reveal the shady underbelly of boxing through the ages.

Boxing's Hall of Shame

The Fight Game's Darkest Days

Jon Hotten

The Years of the Locust is a true story of intrigue, paranoia, murder and money set in the shimmering cities of America's South in the 1990s. It's the story of two men who never should have met, and when they did, one killed the other. There are walk-on parts for Don King, George Foreman, the FBI and a fallen NFL hero, yet it's the two central characters - sociopathic door-to-door-sales-king-turned-boxing-promoter Rick 'Elvis' Parker and his loyal, naive and ultimately incorruptible fighter Tim Anderson - that make this story extraordinary and unforgettable. 
 
It would be impossible to invent a man like Rick Parker, a freakishly fat ginger-haired giant who modelled his personal style on Elvis Presley and wanted to become the next Don King. Don himself told Rick how to do it - find a white man who could become the heavyweight champion of the world. Then Rick met Tim Anderson, a handsome, funny former baseball pro - was he the fighter to take Parker all the way? Rick left a trail of fixed fights and violent mayhem all across the South, but his dream stayed out of reach. By the end of his reign of terror Tim would be broke, poisoned and facing the hardest choice of all. And now Tim is doing life without parole in a state prison, and Rick - well, Rick's dead. 
 
By juxtaposing the lives of these two extraordinary men, The Years of the Locust turns a remarkable, riotous true-crime story into a profound examination of chance, choices and remorse - one that's scary, sad and blackly, bleakly funny.

The Years of the Locust

A True Story of Murder, Money and Mayhem in the Last Age of Boxing

Davis Miller

Collected here for the first time are the best of Davis Miller's essays and memoirs.  The volume contains his celebrated trilogy of award-winning Muhammad Ali pieces, including the classic 'My Dinner with Ali', together with a provocative new essay called 'The Yin and the Yang of Muhammad Ali'.  There are also two pieces about Miller's unusual relationship with another boxer, 'Sugar' Ray Leonard, and he continues to explore the Bruce Lee phenomenon - as he did in his acclaimed bestseller The Tao of Bruce Lee. The Zen of Muhammad Ali tells us about fighting, living, friendship and love.  The pieces are arranged - each with an illuminating new note - to form a unique and haunting book.

The Zen Of Muhammad Ali

and Other Obsessions

Billy Cribb

Bare-knuckle fighting without the bull! I haven't been to prison for robbery, I didn't know the Krays and I make no claims to be invincible . . . But my life fighting was the closest to hell I will ever get.'Learn what fuels hatred and makes a once-gentle boy into violent man. Read stories of horrific fighting experiences on the Mafia-controlled extreme fight circuit of New York. Prepare yourself for harrowing descriptions of drug addiction, mindless violence and organised crime. Tarmac Warrior has it all. Billy Cribb was born into a Romani/Jew family and spent most of his childhood travelling. His early years were marred by the racism and bigotry his family endured at the hands of small-minded locals in the villages where they worked. These random attacks planted seeds of anger and hatred in Billy which later manifested in his fighting - for Billy Cribb became one of the greatest bare-knuckle fighters of his generation. Revealing an underground fight scene rarely glimpsed by those on the outside, Tarmac Warrior traces Billy's career from his first fights on the motorways and A roads around Britain onto the cross channel ferries which provided an arena for many of his early fights. It then follows Billy's move to Majorca, giving a frightening insight into what really goes on in this seemingly idyllic Mediterranean island: the timeshare racketeering, extortion and organised crime which lie under the surface of the popular holiday destination.

Tarmac Warrior

The Violent World Of Extreme Fighting

Carl Froch

Carl Froch grew up on a tough Nottingham housing estate. His dad took him to the local boxing gym at just nine years old, hoping boxing would keep him out of trouble. Carl’s incredible natural ability soon became clear and he rapidly ascended the heights of professional boxing, becoming three-time Super Middleweight champion and Britain’s most exciting boxer. 
 
In 29 professional fights has suffered defeat only twice. His greatest fights have already gone down in boxing history. In 2009 he was knocked down for the first time in his career by Jermain Taylor. Behind on everyone's scorecard but his own, until, with just 14 seconds of the fight to go, he came back in spectacular fashion with a stunning knock out. In 2012 he emphatically beat Lucian Bute to reclaim his belt in front of record audiences. The press described the fight as ‘one of the best nights in British boxing’. 
 
The Cobra follows Britain's most respected boxer every step of the way as he prepares for, and fights, the most important bouts of his life. Honest, outspoken, and every inch the boy from Nottingham, Carl pulls no punches in his revealing story from inside the high-stakes world of boxing, from his first discovery of his talent to his ascent to World Champion. 
 
**Fully updated from the hardback; this edition includes two brand new chapters covering Carl's astonishing fifth-round destruction of previously unbeaten Lucian Bute, to reclaim his IBF world super middleweight title**

The Cobra

My Story

Frank Maloney

Kevin Brennan

From the streets of Peckham to the neon-lit strip of Las Vegas, Frank Maloney's life has been a roller-coaster ride that even he finds hard to believe at times. The Cockney-born son of Irish parents, who once harboured thoughts of becoming a priest, instead went on to manage Lennox Lewis for 12 years and help him become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.In No Baloney, Frank lifts the lid on the world of big-time boxing and its household names, and gives a remarkable account of his time with Lewis, revealing stories and offering opinions that can only come from a true insider. He also gives an insight into the way money, sex, drugs, politics, bribery and corruption have played their part in the sport. But Maloney's story is not just about boxing. It is also about one of life's characters, whose colourful story is told with a brand of humour and emotion that makes it compelling reading. Before settling on a career in boxing, he tried his hand at being a jockey, street trader, chef, pub landlord, cab driver and greengrocer. Along the way there have been girls, fights, a murder investigation and a broken marriage, but through it all there has also been a determination to succeed against the odds. Once dubbed a 'Mental Midget' and 'Pugilistic Pygmy' by Don King, Frank Maloney has gone on to have the last laugh over the flamboyant American promoter and over those who believed he would fail. For, above all, No Baloney is the story of a man who has been lucky enough to experience the kind of life he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams all those years ago in south-east London - and Maloney has made sure he's lived it to the full.

No Baloney

A Journey From Peckham To Las Vegas

Nicola Adams

At London 2012, Nicola Adams made history. The flyweight boxer became the first woman ever to win an Olympic Gold medal for boxing. In Rio 2016, with the nation cheering her on, she did it all over again. 
 
Years of relentless training, fundraising and determination have seen Nicola battle through injury, prejudice and defeat to become one of Britain best-loved athletes and an inspiration to all those who are chasing after a seemingly impossible dream. 
 
From a leisure centre in Leeds to the Olympic Stadium in Rio, Nicola with her infamous smile has become the poster girl for women in sport. She's a trailblazer, record-breaker, and has led the way for women's boxing. This is Nicola's story of grit, talent and the real person behind the smile.

Believe

Boxing, Olympics and my life outside the ring

Bernard O'Mahoney

From Salford to St Louis, former professional boxer Wayne Barker fought every man who ever challenged him. In this brutally honest account of his eventful life, Wayne recounts how his parents left him in the care of the travelling community, where he learned to fight and journeyed throughout Britain and Ireland to take on opponents for cash. 
 
After being charged with attempting to murder a child killer, Wayne fled to America, where he found work in the gymnasiums of New York sparring with the likes of world champion Wilfred Benítez. His ability in the ring was noticed by promoter Bobby Gleason, whose gym had been graced by legendary boxers such as Jake LaMotta. Gleason set up a fight in Caracas between Wayne and former super middleweight world champion Fulgencio Obelmejias ('Fully Obel'). 
 
Wayne’s past eventually caught up with him and he was deported to Britain, where he served time in prison. He returned to the streets to earn a living from bare-knuckle fighting, before becoming a trainer and running a gym. Cancer claimed his life in 2012.

Wayne Barker: Born to Fight

The Extraordinary Story of a Bare-Knuckle Boxer

Bob Mee

Sport can offer catharsis in times of crisis, but not this time. Liston was a mob fighter with a criminal past, and rumours were spreading that Clay was not just a noisy, bright-eyed boy blessed with more than his share of the craziness of youth, but a believer in a shadowy cult: the Nation of Islam. Instead of a hero and a villain, boxing had served up two bad guys. 
 
Against this backdrop of political instability, of a country at war with itself, in a time when ordinary African American people were still being maimed and killed for the smallest acts of defiance, Liston and Clay sought out their own individual destinies. 
 
Liston and Ali follows the contrasting paths these two men took, from their backgrounds in Arkansas and Kentucky through to that sixteen-month period in 1964 and 1965 when the story of the world heavyweight championship centred on them and all they stood for. Using original source material, it explores a riveting chapter in sporting history with fresh insight and in rare detail.

Liston and Ali

The Ugly Bear and the Boy Who Would Be King

Barry McGuigan

On a hot summer's night, in June 1985, in one of the most emotionally charged fights of all time, Barry McGuigan beat Eusebio Pedroza to become the featherweight champion of the world. An epic battle that lasted a full 15 rounds, it remains one of sport's greatest moments - watched by 27,000 spectators ringside and by a further 20 million on television around the world. 
 
Raised in the border town of Clones, Co. Monaghan, at the height of the troubles, Barry McGuigan united people across sectarian and religious divides during a difficult time in the country's political history. A Catholic, Barry married his Protestant childhood sweetheart, Sandra in 1981. An Irishman, he fought for the British title, wearing boxing shorts in the colours of the United Nation's Flag of Peace - and in place of a national anthem his musician father, Pat McGuigan would often sing a heartfelt rendition of 'Danny Boy' before a fight. 
 
Engaging and intelligent, McGuigan is a renowned and revered figure in the boxing world and beyond. In this candid autobiography, The Clones Cyclone shares his stories of extraordinary professional triumph and devastating personal tragedy.

Cyclone: My Story

John Kavanagh

Growing up in Dublin, John Kavanagh was a skinny kid who was frequently bullied. After suffering a bad beating when he intervened to help a man who was being attacked, he decided he had to learn to defend himself. Before long, he was training fighters in a tiny shed, and promoting the earliest mixed-martial arts events in Ireland. And then, a cocky young lad called Conor McGregor walked into his gym ... 
 
In Win or Learn, John Kavanagh tells his own remarkable life story - which is at the heart of the story of the extraordinary explosion of MMA in Ireland and globally. Kavanagh has become a guru to young men and women seeking to master the arts of combat. And as the trainer of the world's most charismatic male MMA star, he has become a magnet for talented fighters from all over the world. Kavanagh's portrait of Conor McGregor - who he has seen in his lowest moments, as well as in his greatest triumphs - is a revelation. 
 
What emerges from Win or Learn is a remarkable portrait of ambition, discipline, and persistence in the face of years and years of disappointment. It is a must read for every MMA fan - but also for anyone who wants to understand how to follow a dream and realize a vision.

Win or Learn

MMA, Conor McGregor and Me: A Trainer's Journey

Kevin Mitchell

25th February 1995 
The Dark Destroyer vs the G-Man 
Nigel Benn and Gerald McClennan 
 
Two men with a reputation to defend - a reputation for brutal, unforgiving combat both in the ring and outside it. Ostensibly, they were fighting for a world title and a lot of money, the stuff of professional boxing. But this fight was different. It was a rare collision of wills, and few present had seen anything like it. 
 
After ten of the most gruelling and vicious rounds that the sport of boxing has ever witnessed McClellan finally was defeated. He knelt in his corner on one knee in submission. And he never got up. 
 
This is the story of what brought these two men together on the night of 25th February 1995 and how that night changed them forever. It's a story too about those associated with the promotion of public fist-fighting, who bend morality to suit their needs. It's a story that attempts to unravel the glamour of violence. 
 
William Hill Sports Book of the Year Finalist.

War, Baby

The Glamour of Violence

Derick Allsop

Few sports polarise public opinion as boxing does. Some contend that it is repugnant and barbaric, for others a legitimate, regulated contest of skill, strength and willpower. What cannot be denied is that the fight game has produced some of sport's greatest icons. Many more are content to make a decent living or at least supplement their income by stepping into the ring. 
 
Fighting Chance gets up close with those involved in everyday British boxing. It goes behind the scenes at shows and into gyms to meet champions such as Ricky Hatton, starry-eyed young men dreaming of world titles, hard-nosed pros surviving another pay day and veteran trainers who have seen it all and sometimes wish they hadn't. Many of them say this brutal trade has saved them from a life of crime and drugs, and given them an opportunity to find self-esteem. All recognise the possible cost - Paul Ingles, for example, almost lost his life in the ring - but maintain it is a risk worth taking. 
 
Martin Jolley attempted suicide in his darkest hour but survived and sought a kind of refuge as a journeyman boxer, taking fights at short notice and then returning to his day job as a printer. Michael Jennings' brother was killed by an addiction to drugs and he is convinced the sport has spared him the same tragic fate. Others, however, are always tormented by their demons. Michael Gomez, once held on a murder charge, was hailed as a future world champion until he went off the rails, plunging his private life into turmoil and leaving his career on the brink. Brian Hughes, one of the best-known and most successful trainers in the country, admits his love of boxing has been eroded by the 'stinking' side of the business. 
 
Often shocking, sometimes humorous, always gripping, Fighting Chance is an odyssey through a world few will have encountered. It gives a candid insight and many of its compelling characters.

Fighting Chance

Winners and Losers in the Ultimate Risk Business

I'm A Little Special: A Muhammad Ali Reader collects 30 of the best pieces ever written about this sporting legend in an anthology by the greatest about the Greatest. Muhammad Ali's story is told by a stellar array of authors, athletes and social commentators, all of them compelled to write about this amazing man. 
 
In addition to pieces by Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer, Floyd Patterson defends Ali's right to criticise America's participation in the Vietnam War; Malcolm X explains how he went from 'entertainer' to 'threat' with his declaration as a 'man of race'; Ali himself contributes with some poetry in his famous interview with Playboy magazine; and Gay Talese gives us a front seat on the 1996 ride to Cuba where Ali met Fidel Castro. 
 
Spanning four decades and including 16 pages of photographs, I'm A Little Special is the ultimate book about one of the true heroes of the twentieth century.

I'm A Little Special

A Muhammad Ali Reader

Dominic Calder-Smith

In the late 1980s heavyweight boxing was ruled by one man - Mike Tyson. No one could touch him, it seemed, but nonetheless a generation of fighters tried. From 1986 to 1989, Mitch Green, Reggie Gross, Marvis Frazier, Pinklon Thomas, Tony Tucker and Carl Williams all attempted to bring Tyson to his knees. They all failed. 
 
Everyone knows the story of Tyson's decline and fall - the manchild who seemed poised to become one of the greatest boxers in history is now a disgraced relic - but what happened to the men he defeated during his irrepressible prime? 
 
In The Long Round, Dominic Calder-Smith talks to these men nearly twenty years on - the Baptist minister, the drugs counsellor, the security guard at Ground Zero, the convicted assassin and many of their contemporaries - tracing their lives from their upbringings and years of promise to their encounters with Tyson and the present day. 
 
The Long Round explores, openly and honestly, the pain they felt in defeat and their subsequent search for self-respect, their problems with drugs and relationships, their legal woes and financial mismanagements. Some of these men have forged new lives outside of boxing, others struggle to do so, a few even harbour impossible hopes of one last shot at the title. 
 
The Long Round is the story of the fight game - a story of unfulfilled dreams and turbulent lives, of letting boxing go and making a fresh start. It is the story of what happens to fighting men when they move away from the spotlight of the prize ring and have to survive the game of life - the longest round of all.

The Long Round

Gangsters have been around boxing for ever. When boxing took hold in Madison Square Garden just after the First World War, a new wave of criminals moved in: the Mob. It was then that Prohibition gave street legitimacy to organised crime right across America; and by the time Joe Louis arrived to breathe excitement through a country ravaged by the Great Depression, the wise guys were firmly entrenched at ringside. Mike Jacobs, the grizzled boss of boxing at the Garden for nearly twenty years, made the Brown Bomber the biggest sports star in the world, and a string of romantic writers ensured this would be remembered as the fight game's golden age. They mingled with underworld heavies along a strip of New York pavement near the Garden known only as Jacobs Beach. 
 
Kevin Mitchell's gripping book is the unsanitised story of those times and that place, of Rat Pack cool and the fading of the Mob's peculiar glamour, brilliantly told through the eyes of the men who were there.

Jacobs Beach

The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of Boxing

Norman Mailer

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Norman Mailer's The Fight focuses on the 1974 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in Kinshasa, Zaire. Muhammad Ali met George Foreman in the ring. Foreman's genius employed silence, serenity and cunning. He had never been defeated. His hands were his instrument, and 'he kept them in his pockets the way a hunter lays his rifle back into its velvet case'. Together the two men made boxing history in an explosive meeting of two great minds, two iron wills and monumental egos.

The Fight

Budd Schulberg

Ringside is a bountiful collection of the most memorable boxing stories by legendary fight-game writer Budd Schulberg. 
 
 Schulberg takes us all the way back to an epic bare-knuckle contest in England 200 years ago; draws a revealing portrait of 'Uncle' Mike Jacobs, the promotional impresario of boxing in its golden age; expertly places Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali in the social context of their times; brings followers up to date on the careers of the great names of recent decades - Tyson, Holyfield, de la Hoya, Hopkins, 'Chico' Corrales; and much more. 
 
 Throughout this book, Schulberg provides the perfect blend of great writing on great fighters, laced with a realistic sense of boxing's wrongs as well as its rights. With prose that sparkles with authority and insight, Ringside is a main event in the world of sports literature.

Ringside

A Treasury of Boxing Reportage

When Carl Froch defeated George Groves in their Wembley Stadium re-match in front of 80,000 fans, it went down as the biggest fight in British boxing history, cementing Carl’s place as our greatest boxer – a pure warrior who has never accepted the easy way. 
 
Carl grew up a tough kid on a Nottingham estate, where boxing helped to keep him out of trouble. His incredible natural ability soon led to a world amateur medal before he turned pro and embarked on a long journey with his mentor and corner man Rob McCracken. 
 
Carl’s career has always been defined by taking on the odds with blisteringly tough fights. He was never scared to fight in someone else’s backyard and always faced the hardest opponents to prove himself – Jean Pascal, Arthur Abraham, Andre Ward, Lucien Bute and his incredible last round knock-out of Jermain Taylor. 
 
But of course he will always be remembered for his showdowns with the great Dane Mikkel Kessler and then George Groves, avenging his initial points defeat by Kessler and finishing Groves for a second time with one of the greatest punches in British boxing history. 
 
Froch was first a local and now a national hero and here he tells the story of how he fought his way through sheer guts and determination to the summit of the boxing world. 
 
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS THE COBRA - NOW FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED

Froch

My Autobiography

Geoffrey Ward

WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 
 
He was the first black heavyweight champion in history (1908-15) and the most celebrated - and most reviled - African American of his age. In Unforgivable Blackness, prize-winning biographer Geoffrey C. Ward brings to vivid life the real Jack Johnson, a figure far more complex than the newspaper headlines could ever convey. 
 
Johnson battled his way from obscurity to the top of the heavyweight ranks and in 1908 won the greatest prize in American sports - one that had always been the preserve of white boxers. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if colour did not exist. Because of this, the federal government set out to destroy him and he was forced to endure a year of prison and seven years of exile. As Ward shows, Johnson was seen as a perpetual threat to white and African Americans alike - profligate, arrogant, amoral, a dark menace and a danger to the natural order of things. 
 
Unforgivable Blackness is the first full-scale biography of Johnson in more than twenty years. Accompanied by more than fifty photographs and drawing on a wealth of new material - including Johnson's never-before-published prison memoir - it restores Jack Johnson to his rightful place in the pantheon of sporting and social warriors.

Unforgivable Blackness

The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

Jackie Turpin

Now in his 80th year, 'Battling' Jack Turpin is the last surviving member of his generation of Britain's best-known and best-loved boxing family. 
 
Jack's father, Lionel Turpin, came from British Guiana to volunteer for the British Army during the Great War. He was wounded on the battlefields of France and invalided to Warwick, the first black man to settle in the area. Lionel married a local girl but his early death left her struggling to raise their three sons and two daughters in pre-Welfare State England. 
 
As young men, the excitement and gladiatorial glamour of the ring lured Jack and his brothers into professional boxing. From a home-made backstreet gymnasium, they punched their way into the record books and into the hearts of the British people. 
 
Battling Jack is a wonderfully narrated account of the life and times of a remarkable man who was once Britain's busiest featherweight. It is also the history of the beginnings of a black presence in British boxing. Turpin offers us a ringside seat at heroic battles and comic encounters. He takes us behind the scenes of a scandal that rocked the sporting world and into his confidence about the mystery that surrounds his younger brother's death. 
 
Jack Turpin has out-stared ignorance and prejudice, tasted triumph and celebrity, and endured hardship and tragedy. Heart-rending, raw, honest and funny, his is a story that had to be told.

Battling Jack Turpin

You Gotta Fight Back

Patrick Myler

More than the world heavyweight championship was at stake when Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling on 22 June 1938. In a world on the brink of war, the contest was projected as a test of nationalistic, racial and political ideals. It was black man against white man, a showdown between democracy and totalitarianism. 
 
No single event in the history of boxing generated as much excitement or such extremes of emotions. It was the night Louis hit a peak of fistic perfection, hardly missing a punch as he destroyed the challenger inside three brutal minutes. 
 
Following the Second World War, the two boxers' lives took contrasting turns. Louis was hounded over unpaid taxes and drifted into a hazy world of drugs, paranoia and ill health, eventually dying in 1981. Schmeling, meanwhile, became a successful businessman and remained active until his death in 2005. 
 
Ring of Hate is a gripping story of two men drawn together by their chosen profession and divided by the cruel demands of warring nations.

Ring of Hate: The Brown Bomber and Hitler's Hero

Joe Louis v. Max Schmeling and the Bitter Propaganda War

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The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

8 spirited heroes that will inspire you to be brave 

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8 spirited heroes that will inspire you to be brave

6 lessons your child will learn from Terry Pratchett books

6 lessons your child will learn from Terry Pratchett's books

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Children's reading lists

Where to start with Terry Pratchett's books

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16 books for 9 to 12-year-olds that love adventures

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32 spooky books to read this Halloween

An image of the author Terry Pratchett, on a red and purple background, holding out his hand as though he is casting a spell and there are a couple of illustrations from his books riding the wave

'At his best, Terry was a teacher': Why we love Terry Pratchett

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