Mohammed Ali, the man who was once known as Cassius Clay, was the greatest boxer of all time and the only one who managed to surpass the narrow boundaries of the boxing world and become one of the most recognizable figures of his time and the subsequent era. He is a true hero, from the last historical period that produced heroes.
This is his story, which, given the heroic stature of the protagonist, could only be described as an epic. Written with literary mastery and journalistic credibility, Mohammed Ali, The King of the World is an exciting book that can be read in one go and at the same time, a reminder to the - more or less complacent - people of today that greatness can only be born through conflict.
"Mohammed Ali, The King of the World" is possibly the best of the biographies of Mohammed Ali that have been published, and certainly the best-selling one in the world, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Remnick. Its content is nothing more than a chronicle of the conflicts that took place within the framework of American society, with Ali at the center, both inside and outside the ring, from the early 1960s to the mid-1960s.
Three of the most important fights in the career of the great boxer are pivotal events in the narrative, two of which he fought against Sonny Liston (in the first one, in 1964, he won the world heavyweight title, and in the second one, in 1965, he defended it for the first time) and one against Floyd Patterson, from whom Liston had taken the world title a few years earlier.
The choice of fights is, of course, anything but random, as they concern that period of time when Ali, apart from being a famous athlete, was also a political figure of immense importance for America in the 20th century.