About this ebook
When Clay defeated Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship in 1964, the press embraced him as a clean-cut kid who would restore wholesomeness to boxing. Three years later, that image was in ruins. His conversion to Islam, his outspoken support of Black Power, his inflammatory statements about Vietnam, and his refusal to be drafted had made him one of the most vilified men in America. The same public that had cheered him now called him a traitor.
Jack Olsen went deeper than the public debate. He talked at length with those who knew Clay most intimately: his family, his first boxing coach, his trainer, his physician, the businessmen who gave him his start, and dozens of others. He followed and interviewed Clay himself extensively. What emerged was a portrait of startling complexity.
"Clay's personality," Olsen wrote, "is like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were cut by a drunken carpenter, a jumbled collection of moods and attitudes that do not seem to interlock."
Behind the bravado, behind the inflammatory statements, behind the hundreds of thousands of words written about him, Olsen found something unexpected: a troubled, sensitive young man filled with doubts, fears, and private dreams, still searching for his own identity at the precise moment history was demanding he become a symbol.
Jack Olsen, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer called "an American treasure," wrote this book at the height of his powers as a journalist. It shows on every page.
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About the author
Jack Olsen is the award-winning author of thirty-three books, which have been published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen’s journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Newspaper Guild’s Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as “an American treasure.”
Olsen was described as “the dean of true crime authors” by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News and “the master of true crime” by the Detroit Free Press and Newsday. Publishers Weekly called him “the best true crime writer around.” His studies of crime are required reading in university criminology courses and have been cited in the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In a page-one review, the Times described his work as “a genuine contribution to criminology and journalism alike.”
Olsen is a two-time winner in the Best Fact Crime category of the Mystery Writers of America, Edgar award.
