STRONG BOY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN L. SULLIVAN, AMERICA'S FIRST SPORTS HERO is now available in paperback. Same great content, half the price!
Happy to see this great review from the Boston Globe on the front cover: "From the first page to the last, Klein's prose retains its powers of enchantment and illumination. It is one of the best boxing books ever penned."
Approaching nineteenth-century sports and boxing with a twenty-first-century perspective, STRONG BOY brings to life John L. Sullivan, a man who was the gold standard of boxing for more than a decade and the first athlete to earn more than a million dollars. He had a big ego, big mouth, and bigger appetites. His womanizing, drunken escapades, and constant presence on the police blotter were a godsend to a burgeoning newspaper industry. The larger-than-life boxer embodied the American Dream for late nineteenth-century immigrants as he rose from Boston's Irish working class to become the most recognizable man in the nation. The "Boston Strong Boy," was our nation's first sports hero, and his name was not Babe Ruth.
If you have already purchased the hardcover version, congratulations! You now own a rare, out-of-print first edition. (Don't go spend it all at once.) If not, the paperback version of STRONG BOY is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Indiebound.
