One of the biography’s central themes projects the boxer’s numerous political postures against a backdrop of the flashing, neon-lit social issues of the 1960s, which boiled down to the old problem of race in America - particularly where they intersected with black pride and black empowerment.
Eig’s book, a deeply researched, simply styled study, makes a game effort at telling the whole story, leaving out the judgment while presenting many colorful vignettes of the man’s life, uncensored. There was a lot more to the complicated, contradictory man - who first became famous fighting under his given name, Cassius Clay - than his unorthodox lifestyle. That personality type - which happened to come attached to one of the most unique and beautiful heavyweight fighters of all time - combined with his wonderful playfulness, sense of humor, and genuine human friendliness, allowed him to get away with actions that would have ruined in a night the lives of lesser men.Ī new biography by Chicago writer Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life - the first unauthorized biography of its kind - arrives at an auspicious moment in American history, when, as the Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner put it: “The past isn’t dead. He charged up his enormous energy for life from being around other people, for the most part those who worshipped or indulged his charming egomania.
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