Description
This dazzling tribute to Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s 1974 boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire, brings together the best of Norman Mailer’s classic commentary The Fight with color and black-and-white photographs from the two men who captured Ali like no one else: Neil Leifer and Howard L. Bingham. First published as a signed Collector’s Edition, now available in an unlimited edition
“…the most in-depth look at every step of the fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World.”
“A sensitive portrait of an extraordinary athlete and man, and a pugilistic drama fully as exciting as the reality on which it is based.”
“No fighter, no American athlete, would ever be so connected with a writer as Ali would be with Mailer.”
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) was one of the 20th century’s most influential writers, and one of America’s most renowned and controversial literary figures. The best-selling author of a dozen novels and 20 works of nonfiction, he also wrote plays, screenplays, television miniseries, hundreds of essays, two books of poetry, and a collection of short stories. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Howard L. Bingham (1939–2016) photographed Ali—then Cassius Clay—at a press appearance in Los Angeles in 1962. A year later, Ali knighted him his “personal photographer,” inaugurating a lifelong friendship and over a million photographs of The Champ both in and outside of the ring. His work was featured in magazines including Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Ebony. Native New Yorker Neil Leifer began photographing sports events as a teenager. Over 160 of his pictures have appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and over 40 of his photographs have graced the cover of Time. He has published 17 books, and was one of two principal photographers in TASCHEN’s tribute to Muhammad Ali, GOAT—Greatest Of All Time, and the illustrated edition of Norman Mailer’s The Fight.