About the book
Budd Schulberg's novel of the prize ring takes apart the corruption of the fight racket. At its center is a simple Argentine peasant, cast as a modern Samson, whom an unscrupulous promoter and his press agent build into an attraction with relentless hype. Schulberg crowds the story with characters and gives it an authentic atmosphere, and the wrongs of the business it exposes have not gone away. USA Today called it the quintessential novel of boxing and corruption. Arthur Miller wrote that it indirectly reveals more about civilization than most books that set out to describe civilization, and Gene Tunney praised it as the best book on fighting he had read.
Ryan Holiday praised Schulberg's whole trilogy, noting that each novel captures a different era, and described this one as a boxing story loosely based on the Primo Carnera scandal.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)
Budd Schulberg’s (who wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront) whole trilogy is amazing and each captures a different historical era. His first, What Makes Sammy Run? is Ari Gold before Ari Gold existed–purportedly based on Samuel Goldwyn (of MGM) and Darryl Zanuck. His next book, The Harder They Fall is about boxing and loosely based on the Primo Carnera scandal. All you need to know about Schulberg’s writing is captured in this quote from his obituary: “It’s the writer’s responsibility to stand up against that power. The writers are really almost the only ones, except for very honest politicians, who can make any dent on that system. I tried to do that. And that’s affected me my whole life.” Fiction can do that, and sometimes it does it even better than non-fiction.
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