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The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson
Knopf
October 2009
On Sale: October 13, 2009
480 pages
ISBN: 1400044979
EAN: 9781400044979
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Sports
From the author of the critically acclaimed In Black and
White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr., comes another
illuminating socio-historical narrative of the twentieth
century, this one spun around one of the most iconic figures
of the fight game, Sugar Ray Robinson. Continuing to set himself apart as one of our canniest
cultural historians, Wil Haygood grounds the spectacular
story of Robinson's rise to greatness within the context of
the fighter's life and times. Born Walker Smith, Jr., in
1921, Robinson had an early childhood marked by the seething
racial tensions and explosive race riots that infected the
Midwest throughout the twenties and thirties. After his
mother moved him and his sisters to the relative safety of
Harlem, he came of age in the vibrant post-Renaissance
years. It was there that—encouraged to box by his mother,
who wanted him off the streets—he soon became a rising star,
cutting an electrifying, glamorous figure, riding around
town in his famous pink Cadillac. Beyond the celebrity,
though, Robinson would emerge as a powerful, often
controversial black symbol in a rapidly changing America.
Haygood also weaves in the stories of Langston Hughes, Lena
Horne, and Miles Davis, whose lives not only intersected
with Robinson's but also contribute richly to the scope and
soul of the book. From Robinson's gruesome six-bout war with Jake "Raging
Bull" LaMotta and his lethal meeting with Jimmy Doyle to his
Harlem nightclub years and thwarted show-biz dreams, Haygood
brings the champion's story, in the ring and out, powerfully
to life against a vividly painted backdrop of the world he
captivated.
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