'Boxing is not just figting: it is also training and living right and preparing to go the distance in the broadest sense of the phrase, a relentless managing of self that anyone who gets truly old must learn.'-from Cut Time

Carlo Rotella, an award-winning writer and ringside veteran, unearths the hidden wisdom in anykind of fight, from barroom dustup to HBO extravaganza. He vividly describes the tough choices and subtle pleasures that come the way of every fighter, from perennial undergogs to Larry Holms, the all-time great who still spars to retching exhaustion at the age of fifty.

Tracing the consequences of hurt and craft, the two central facts of boxing, Rotella achieves moving resonances between the worlds inside and outside the ropes. The brief, disastrous fistic career of a college student pinponts the moment when adulthood arrives. The hard-won insight of a fellow fan shows Rotella how to reckon with a car crash. The persistence of a wizened ex-champion gives him the key to undestanding and honoring his grandmother.

Througout, he tackles fascinating questions that have gone largely unexplored until now: What lessons do boxers and other fight people take away from their brutally punishing sport? And why do they come back for more, again and again? As Rotella traces his immersion in the fight world, he achieves what few other writers have: he makes it relevant to us, whether we're fans or not.

Carlo Rotella's writing has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine. DoubleTake, Harper's Magazine, and The American Scholar, which named one of his boxing pieces its Best Essay of theYear. HIs work has also been published in The Best American Essays. He teaches English at Boston College.

'This is a superb book about the nobel squalor of the world of prizefighting. Carlo Rotella has given us an account that is acutely observed and elegantly written, charged on every page with intelligence, pity, surprise,and yes, a kind of wisdom.'-Pete Hamill, author of Drinking: A Life and Forever

'Carlo Rotella writes with his mind, his heart, and his gut. The result is prose that leaves you breathless. As one of his boxers says about another, 'He can hit.''-Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall down and Ex Libris

'Rotella knows that for this to be a book about more than boxing, it must first be a keen, solid account of his time spent at ringside. That's admirably accomplished, and in the process he has written one of the shrewdest, least egocentric, most engaging memoirs about acquiring an education that I've read.'-Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods

Contents

Inroduction: At ringside
1 Halfway
2 Cut time
3 Mismatches
4 An appetite for hitting
5 Out of order
6 The switch
7 The distance
8 Bidness
9 Hurt
Acknowledgments

Interesting book ostensibily about boxing, but really about the human soul. Read like a story. High recommended. ( )