In this captivating and complex portrait of an American sports legend, Russell Sullivan confirms Rocky Marciano's place as a symbol and cultural icon of his era. As much as he embodied the wholesome, rags-to-riches patriotism of a true American hero, he also reflected the racial and ethnic tensions festering behind the country's benevolent facade. Spirited, fast-paced, and rich in detail, Rocky Marciano is the first book to place the boxer in the context of his times. Capturing his athletic accomplishments against the colorful backdrop of the 1950s fight scene, Sullivan examines how Marciano's career reflected the glamour and scandal of boxing as well as tenor of his times.

The sensational and dramatic story of one of boxing's greatest fighters.

This is a book about the life, career, and impact of Rocky Marciano, the legendary heavyweight boxing champion who also stands as a powerful symbol of his times (the early 1950s, or "the Age of Simplicity").

Joe Louis's How to Box will teach you to deliver a knockout punch, step by step. The legendary heavyweight champion thoroughly covers all aspects of boxing in this well-written, definitive guide. Louis's sense of fair play, good sportsmanship, and dedicated training will both instruct and inspire. Beginning with mental discipline, Louis moves through basic training and equipment to stance, punching, and footwork, followed by working with a punching bag, methods of training, and learning various strategic punches. Generously illustrated with diagrams and action photos, here is everything needed to learn how to excel in the ring. One of the greatest boxers of all time, Joe Louis was in the ring before and during World War II. Some of his famous bouts became symbolic of the larger global conflict at hand; because of this he was the first Black American to be widely recognized as a national hero, playing a key role in the eventual integration of professional sports. Also included in this edition are listings of Louis's Heavyweight Title Defenses and championships in every weight class. How To Box concisely presents the best boxing techniques along with a slice of sporting history. Whether you are a sports fan, want a great workout, or plan to competitively enter the ring one day, this book by the man who famously said, "You can run, but you can't hide," is must reading.

Alan Scott Haft provides the first-hand testimony of his father, Harry Haft, a holocaust victim with a singular story of endurance, desperation, and unrequited love. Harry Haft was a sixteen-year-old Polish Jew when he entered a concentration camp in 1944. Forced to fight other Jews in bare-knuckle bouts for the perverse entertainment of SS officers, Harry quickly learned that his own survival depended on his ability to fight and win. Haft details the inhumanity of the "sport" in which he must perform in brutal contests for the officers. Ultimately escaping the camp, Haft’s experience left him an embittered and pugnacious young man. Determined to find freedom, Haft traveled to America and began a career as a professional boxer, quickly finding success using his sharp instincts and fierce confidence. In a historic battle, Haft fights in a match with Rocky Marciano, the future undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Haft’s boxing career takes him into the world of such boxing legends as Rocky Graziano, Roland La Starza, and Artie Levine, and he reveals new details about the rampant corruption at all levels of the sport. In sharp contrast to Elie Wiesel’s scholarly, pious protagonist in Night, Harry Haft is an embattled survivor, challenging the reader’s capacity to understand suffering and find compassion for an antihero whose will to survive threatens his own humanity. Haft’s account, at once dispassionate and deeply absorbing, is an extraordinary story and an invaluable contribution to Holocaust literature.

The first volume of a biography on the former world heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano. Volume One of Three focuses on the fighters life from birth in September of 1923 through to December 1949, paying close attention to his evolution through the Army and brief, but spectacular, amateur career before moving onto the formative stages of a profession that would see him unbeaten. This new second edition brings the authors original concept to print for the first time now complete with images."None of us are perfect. Not even our heroes. Since the death of boxing's only undefeated heavyweight champion in the history of the sport, only six biographers have had the gumption to even attempt to put to page the life story of Rocco Francis Marchegiano, or, Rocky Marciano. And even then, most have either not had access to, looked the other way, or simply glossed over the human struggles that Rocky, like all humans, deal with. Until now. John Cameron has taken the task to show that the heart that beat within the chest of Marciano, the heart that refused to go down to defeat, the heart that overcame seemingly impossible odds, was indeed a human heart. And that doesn't make Rocky less of a hero, but in fact, makes him an even bigger hero, and one more accessable to us. John Cameron is to be commended for going where no one else would dare to go!"Chuck Marbry (Ring Talk Boxing Journalist)"Cameron writes movingly about Rocky's childhood and the lives of his parents, Pierino Marchegiano and Pasqualina Picciuto. Rocky was their miracle baby. Even at a young age the future heavyweight champion of the world revealed traits that would one day distinguish him from other fighters."John J. Raspanti"John Cameron has written a fine book on Rocky Marciano."Ferdie Pacheco"I expected a couple of morsels to nourish and delight, instead I got an epicurean feast of revelations...I think it is safe to say, you know more about Rocky Marciano than anyone."Phil Guarnieri"If you're a fan of one of the most famous fighters ever to put on a pair of gloves, Rocky Marciano, (then) the name John Cameron might become a familiar one to you soon...(the project) is obviously a consuming labour of love for the author"Ian McNeilly (BoxRecNews.com/Boxing Monthly).