Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0821226266, Hardcover)

How do you capture an icon? If the icon is The Greatest, some knockout prose, knockout photography, and a knockout presentation certainly helps. Ali gets all of that in Ringside, a beautiful celebration of a remarkable talent. But it's something else that gives the book its distinct flavor: short, sharp testimonies woven throughout the book that come from the folks who knew Ali, fought him, and observed him. The book's centerpieces--long selections from Alex Haley, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and Peter Richmond--attest to the enormous shadow Ali cast. It's the smaller reflections, though, that capture his controversial greatness. Witness Floyd Patterson, the former champ Ali twice humiliated in the ring: "I came to love Ali. I came to see that I was a fighter and he was history." Witness basketball legend Bill Russell: "I still envy him. He has something I have never been able to attain and very few people I know possess. He has an absolute and sincere faith." Witness Joe Frazier, second-billed in three enormous ring dramas: "I hate Ali.... Twenty years I've been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart and send him back to Jesus." Witness writer Pete Hamill: "His fights resembled some bloody offshoot of ballet."

Ali has always inspired the wordsmiths, and he's always inspired the people, and you can taste that inspiration on every page here. Artfully assembled and generously illustrated with photos of Ali, Ali memorabilia, and Ali artifacts--fight posters, tickets, even the media betting pool for the famed "Rumble in the Jungle" and the X-ray of his jaw after Ken Norton broke it--Ringside is aptly named. It's a front-row seat to an amazing story. --Jeff Silverman