Stunning...(Rating: 5)
Boddy writes that `No one would call the last decades of the twentieth century a golden age of boxing', and, despite their undeniably brilliant packaging, there is little that such twenty-first century match-ups as Mayweather-Hatton or Calzaghe-Hopkins can do to reverse what seems to be an irrevocable shift of the attention of mainstream sports fans away from the `squared circle'. Indeed, where are the grand champions to revile or idolize? The knife-edge separating mercy and cruelty, victory and defeat, negotiated so devastatingly by boxing's historical heroes, is not present either in the comparatively tame sporting cultures dominated by such modern icons as Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. 'Boxing: A Cultural History' shows that other sports can only hope to allude to the shattering immediacy of boxing's theatre of mortality.

Have we, then, become irreparably alienated from our fists? This exhaustive study of several millennia of the celebration and censure of boxing reveals that our attraction to its brutal nostalgia has never been uncomplicated. Characterizing the ring as a site of contestation for notions of gender, sexuality, nationhood, race, and power more generally, and as a metaphor for conflict and confrontation in its many guises (including artistic), 'Boxing' is a stunningly well-researched and eminently readable overview of the evolving mythology of this sport of sports.

From bareknuckle fighting in Homer's Illiad to Mike Tyson and his relationship to hip hop, from Lord Byron's Tom Molineaux to Norman Mailer's Muhammad Ali, the rituals, legends, and language of boxing are narrated with rare attention to detail by the author. It's the sort of book to make you long for the excitement of witnessing the great champions' victories, and the sorrow of their defeats. I can't say if boxing (the sport) is here to stay, but 'Boxing' (the book) will be the reference guide for aficionados and scholars for a generation.