This work brings a fresh perspective to the history of modern prizefighting, a sport which has evolved over several centuries to become one of mankind's most lasting and valued sporting attractions. With his primary focus outside the ropes, the author shows how organizers, publicity agents, and political allies overcame both legal and moral roadblocks to make fisticuffing a lively commercial enterprise. The book begins with the clandestine bare-knuckle fights in eighteenth-century London, and ends with the vibrant, large-scale productions of modern Las Vegas "fight nights." Along the way, he explains many of the myths about antiquarian prizefighters, describes the origins of slave fight folklore, and examines the forces that transformed Las Vegas into the world's leading venue for important fights.

In 1926, Atlanta's Theodore “Tiger” Flowers became the first African-American boxer to win the world middleweight title. The next year, he was dead. More than an account of Flowers's remarkable achievements, the book is a penetrating analysis of the cultural and historical currents that defined the terms of Flowers's success. Through the prism of prizefighting, the author reveals the personal cost African-Americans faced as they attempted to earn black respect while escaping white hostility.

In Prizefighting and Civilization: A Cultural History of Boxing, Race, and Masculinity in Mexico and Cuba, 1840–1940, historian David C. LaFevor traces the history of pugilism in Mexico and Cuba from its controversial beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century through its exponential rise in popularity during the early twentieth century. A divisive subculture that was both a profitable blood sport and a contentious public spectacle, boxing provides a unique vantage point from which LaFevor examines the deeper historical evolution of national identity, everyday normative concepts of masculinity and race, and an expanding and democratizing public sphere in both Mexico and Cuba, the United States’ closest Latin American neighbors. Prizefighting and Civilization explores the processes by which boxing—once considered an outlandish purveyor of low culture—evolved into a nationalized pillar of popular culture, a point of pride that transcends gender, race, and class.

When Jack Johnson defeated white heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries in 1910, it was America's notions of racial superiority that staggered under his blows. Amid riots and lynchings, the search began for the Great White Hope who could put the "uppity" new champion in his place. Here is the startling true story of the most famous--and most hated--black American of his day. "Papa Jack" takes us into a violent and sordid world. It is an astonishing tale of black defiance--and white retribution--set against the dramatic canvas of sports and spectacle in Jim Crow America.

SHAW 16 contains twenty-nine unpublished pieces by Shaw written between 1877 and 1950. The most significant is a ten-page draft synopsis of Man and Superman (the original manuscript draft of the play has been lost) in a contemplated five-act version, providing scholars with a hitherto unavailable ur-text. Equally important for the biographical and artistic insights they offer are the early literary efforts found in Shaw's first opus notebook, including an extended narrative-verse fragment of 1877 set in Dublin; a polemic (his first) on oakum picking and prison conditions; a criticism of organists and orchestral conductors; and an attempted evaluation of contemporary arts and letters in 1878. We find Shaw, through the persona of a female narrator, creating in his own image a fictional memoir of the young Hector Berlioz; offering an ironic vindication of housebreakers (in anticipation of Heartbreak House); exploring the seamy side of the prizefight ring; examining "exhausted" genres of Victorian art in 1880; defining the "true signification of the term Gentleman"; lecturing on Socialism and the family and on realism as the goal of fiction; and penetratingly considering the future of marriage in a rejected book review, one of four included in the volume. The dimensions of Shaw's political views may be examined through nearly a dozen commentaries on politics and on war and peace, ranging from the Boer War (an 1899 draft letter to the press, "Why Not Abolish the Soldier?") and 1903 municipal elections to U.S. Liberty Loans, the Italo-Abyssinian War, "how to talk intelligently" about the Second World War, and the implications of the hydrogen bomb in the nuclear age. For good measure, the volume concludes with two brief playlets, previously unrecorded. The editors have arranged these pieces individually or grouped by theme and genre as near to chronological order as possible, and the reader is brought closer to the original manuscripts by the retention of Shaw's stylistic and spelling inconsistencies, and by transliteration of the shorthand notations he frequently inserted between lines or in the margins. Each text is supplemented by an editorial note providing its provenance and a detailed physical description of the manuscript.

Boxing was popular in the American West long before Las Vegas became its epicenter. However, not everyone in the region was a fan. Counterpunch examines how the sport’s meteoric rise in popularity in the West ran concurrently with a growing backlash among Progressive Era social reformers who saw boxing as barbaric. These tensions created a morality war that pitted state officials against city leaders, boxing promoters against social reformers, and fans against religious groups. Historian Meg Frisbee focuses on several legendary heavyweight prizefights of the period and the protests they inspired to explain why western geography, economy, and culture ultimately helped the sport’s supporters defeat its detractors. A fascinating look at early American boxing, Counterpunch showcases fighters such as “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, and Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champ, and it provides an entertaining way to understand both the growth of the American West and the history of this popular—and controversial—sport.