Description
The memoirs of the boxer known as the Brown Bomber, who became heavyweight champion of the world in 1937.
Library's review
He was born in 1914 on an impoverished farm in Alabama, the son of a penniless sharecropper. He was two years old when his father was put in a home for the Negro Insane. He grew up in the slums of Detroit, standing on soup lines with his family, unable to get past the sixth grade. He started boxing
Joe's story-in his own words-encompasses all the action of this career, and all the personalities he encountered, along with some of the best fight descriptions ever published. But the book is the total picture of the man: after his retirement from the ring a terrible series of catastrophies resulted in the first in a series of breakdowns. The women and drugs, his failures in buisness, his exhausting battles witht he U.S. Government over taxes, the collapse of his first marriage-all of these are told with startling frankness, revealing Joe's attempts, and failures, to create more for himself than a reputation as a boxer.
Joe Louis: My Life is a moving autobiography of strength pervaded by frailty. It is the personal, intimate, hard-hitting story of Joe Louis-one of the tragic-heroic figures of our time.
Edna and Art Rust Jr. are married and live in New York Citiy. Art Rust Jr., a former sportscaster for NBC-TV, is the author of Get That Nigger Off the Field.
Contents
1914-Alabama
1926-Detroit
1934-Chicago
1935-New York: Carnera adn Baer
1936-First Schmeling fight
1937-Heavyweight champion of the world
1938-Second Schmeling fight
1939-1942-Wartime
1942-1946-Army years
1946-1947-Out of the army
1948-1951-Retirement and return
1951-1960-After the ring
1960s-Taxes, women, and marriage
1970s-Up to the present
Ring record of Joe Louis
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when he was 17, using the money his mother gave him for violin lessons. But from then on the life and career of Joe Louis Barrow sky-rocketed. Winning fight after fight, Joe knocked his way to the top-by 1937 he was the heavyweight champion of the world; his boxing talent was recognized as the greatest of the century. And along with the championship came fame and glamour-Hollywood appearances, meetings with Presidents dates with film stars. By the time of the second Louis-Schmeling fight Joe Louis personified all of pre-war America in his dramatic knockout ofthe German fighter. Joe Louis was the Brown Boomber; he was America.Joe's story-in his own words-encompasses all the action of this career, and all the personalities he encountered, along with some of the best fight descriptions ever published. But the book is the total picture of the man: after his retirement from the ring a terrible series of catastrophies resulted in the first in a series of breakdowns. The women and drugs, his failures in buisness, his exhausting battles witht he U.S. Government over taxes, the collapse of his first marriage-all of these are told with startling frankness, revealing Joe's attempts, and failures, to create more for himself than a reputation as a boxer.
Joe Louis: My Life is a moving autobiography of strength pervaded by frailty. It is the personal, intimate, hard-hitting story of Joe Louis-one of the tragic-heroic figures of our time.
Edna and Art Rust Jr. are married and live in New York Citiy. Art Rust Jr., a former sportscaster for NBC-TV, is the author of Get That Nigger Off the Field.
Contents
1914-Alabama
1926-Detroit
1934-Chicago
1935-New York: Carnera adn Baer
1936-First Schmeling fight
1937-Heavyweight champion of the world
1938-Second Schmeling fight
1939-1942-Wartime
1942-1946-Army years
1946-1947-Out of the army
1948-1951-Retirement and return
1951-1960-After the ring
1960s-Taxes, women, and marriage
1970s-Up to the present
Ring record of Joe Louis
Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
A list of fights, some discussion of the tax troubles, and how prowess in the ring doesn't lead to much luck in business. An undistinguished biography, whose interest lies in the facts rather than the presentation, or in the insights. originally published in 1979, but I've lost track of the
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publisher. Show Less
ISBN
151463751
Publication
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich New York and London