Updated by Nigel Collins, author of "Boxing Babylon", this classic "bible of boxing" has been continuously in print since 1959. Here in one stunning volume is the vast panorama of the "sweet science", from bare-knuckle fighting through the rise of Lennox Lewis. Photos throughout.

"This book illustrates the complete story of boxing, from the professionally trained pugilists of the classical amphitheatres, who fought to the death with vicious studs strapped to their hands, through the thick-set bare-fist sluggers who met in the hundred-round contests of the nineteenth century, to today's heroes, mainly from impoverished backgrounds, for whom boxing is the only route up from crime and destitution to TV stardom, uncountable riches and world fame."--Book flap.

Celebrates boxing's greatest fights and fighters.

Through "An Illustrated History of Boxing", fans will experience the careers of fighters in every weight class, from flyweight to heavyweight. They can relive the days when Jack Dempsey, Max Baer, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and Mike Tyson ruled the heavyweights, and witness Evander Holyfield's rise to the top of the heap. All the key matches in all divisions are described. Photos.

Throughout history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers, and filmmakers have recorded and tried to make sense of boxing. From Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. In her encyclopedic investigation of the shifting social, political, and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, Kasia Boddy throws new light on an elemental struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. Looking afresh at everything from neoclassical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boddy explores the ways in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media. Boddy pulls no punches, looking to the work of such diverse figures as Henry Fielding and Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin and Philip Roth, James Joyce and Mae West, Bertolt Brecht and Charles Dickens in an all-encompassing study that tells us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.

Throughout its history, boxing has thrilled, outraged and elevated fans with its intoxicating combination of primal violence, gutwrenching drama and stirring courage. That potent mix has attracted many of the world's finest writers. The Book of Boxing is a collection of their most powerful efforts.