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.

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.

"It didn't occur to me until fairly late in the work that I was writing a book about the beginnings of a national celebrity culture. By 1860, a few boxers had become heroes to working-class men, and big fights drew considerable newspaper coverage, most of it quite negative since the whole enterprise was illegal. But a generation later, toward the end of the century, the great John L. Sullivan of Boston had become the nation's first true sports celebrity, an American icon. The likes of poet Vachel Lindsay and novelist Theodore Dreiser lionized him—Dreiser called him 'a sort of prize fighting J. P. Morgan'—and Ernest Thompson Seton, founder of the Boy Scouts, noted approvingly that he never met a lad who would not rather be Sullivan than Leo Tolstoy."—from the Afterword to the Updated EditionElliott J. Gorn's The Manly Art tells the story of boxing's origins and the sport's place in American culture. When first published in 1986, the book helped shape the ways historians write about American sport and culture, expanding scholarly boundaries by exploring masculinity as an historical subject and by suggesting that social categories like gender, class, and ethnicity can be understood only in relation to each other.This updated edition of Gorn's highly influential history of the early prize rings features a new afterword, the author's meditation on the ways in which studies of sport, gender, and popular culture have changed in the quarter century since the book was first published. An up-to-date bibliography ensures that The Manly Art will remain a vital resource for a new generation.

Late nineteenth-century Mexico was a country rife with health problems. In 1876, one out of every nineteen people died prematurely in Mexico City, a staggeringly high rate when compared to other major Western world capitals at the time, which saw more modest premature death rates of one out of fifty-two (London), one out of forty-four (Paris), and one out of thirty-five (Madrid). It is not an exaggeration to maintain that each day dozens of bodies could be found scattered throughout the streets of Mexico City, making the capital city one of the most unsanitary places in the Western Hemisphere. In light of such startling scenes, in Death Is All around Us Jonathan M. Weber examines how Mexican state officials, including President Porfirio Díaz, tried to resolve the public health dilemmas facing the city. By reducing the high mortality rate, state officials believed that Mexico City would be seen as a more modern and viable capital in North America. To this end the government used new forms of technology and scientific knowledge to deal with the thousands of unidentified and unburied corpses found in hospital morgues and cemeteries and on the streets. Tackling the central question of how the government used the latest technological and scientific advancements to persuade citizens and foreigners alike that the capital city—and thus Mexico as a whole—was capable of resolving the hygienic issues plaguing the city, Weber explores how the state’s attempts to exert control over procedures of death and burial became a powerful weapon for controlling the behavior of its citizens.

“The quintessential novel of boxing and corruption.” (USA Today). “Toro” Molina certainly looks the part. He’s built like the Minotaur, but few would guess at the fear consuming the Argentine farmer and former circus performer after he’s brought to the United States to be the next heavyweight champion of the world. The problem is that Molina can’t box at all. But monstrous fight promoter Nick Latka fixes every fight on the way to the championship, and builds Toro’s renown with the help of cynical sports journalist Ed Lewis and a host of lackeys. First published in 1947, The Harder They Fall stands as a powerful exposé of professional boxing by one of the sport’s true poet laureates. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Budd Schulberg including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

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.

The best of Mr. Schulberg's reporting on the sweet science, from Benny Leonard to Muhammad Ali to George Foreman, including reflections on the social history of the fight game, the mystique of the heavyweight championship, the seamy side of the business, and his own sparring match with Papa. A crowd-pleaser all the way. --Chicago Tribune. Belongs on the same shelf with the real heavyweights--A. J. Liebling, W. C. Heinz, and Hugh McIlvanney. --Allen Barra, New York Times Book Review