Just finished reading an advance copy of the new book about Cus D'Amota titled 'Confusing the Enemy' and thought I would recommend it. I enjoyed the read although it's a long one and learned quite a bit from it. I came across the following review the other day and rather than try and write my own I'll just say I think Bruce summed the book up nicely here: http://www.confusingtheenemy.com/review-boxing-world.html
Clay, why are these boxing books so expensive ... close to forty bucks for this one ... $ 35 (US) plus for Jeannette ... what gives ? I'm buying it anyway but still , it's expensive ...
Evan, Well in the case of this one, it's a very large book as you'll discover when you go to lift it out of your mailbox. The Jennette book was pretty big as I recall as well. Both have a lot of pages, especially the D'Amato book. If McFarland published them they'd probably be in the $60-75 range. Clay
Can't wait to read this but I'll lobby my connections at the NYPL to purchase it thrifty mick that i am!
Im reading this now and Ive got to say Im disappointed. I was really looking forward to this book and somehow I missed that it is a "biographical NOVEL" meaning there is a lot of completely fictional situations and conversations. The book is very similar to the book on Bummy Davis a few years ago. On top of the fact that large chunks are concocted completely from the authors imagination he tries to loosely draw together instances and connections concerning the mob, boxing, promoters, and managers that sometimes simply arent supported by fact. Sometimes he does this by mere suggestion, using notes at the beginning of a chapter to plant a seed in the readers mind, or he simply creates meetings and conversations that arent documented or couldnt possibly be reproduced in order to illustrate these scenarios. Its very frustrating. Being that it's a "novel" it has no citations for any of these occurences which leaves one wondering where the truth ends and fiction begins. Cus' early life and what formulated his unique perspective on life and some would say his mania is really glossed over and passed by quickly within a few pages. Less than a quarter of a way through the book Floyd Patterson is introduced, not by coincidence this is the beginning of Cus being well documented in the press and more widely known. The problem is that by this point Cus was already a well known and well established character in the sport and had lived more than half his life so hes essentially lobbing us a softball by spending the vast majority of the book dealing with the portion of Cus' life that we are already most familiar with. I found it very odd that there was nothing of Cus' extensive work with the deaf during the mid 1940s and several fighters that Cus built up arent even mentioned. The narrative structure is bizarre as well. It switches from third to first person (being viewed from the eyes of a fictional character names Kunsterman). Books like this and the Bummy Davis book are difficult for me to read because you can hear the author begging for their book to be made into a movie with every turn of the page, if that sounds like a compliment its not. It reads as desperation. My take is that if you like fictional accounts of historical people and happen to be a boxing fan then you will enjoy this. Otherwise you could cut out a lot of pointless and made up situations by spending the same time that it would take to read this book on actually researching D'amato yourself and youd save $50 in the bargain.