Akron Public Library

"The King is dead. The Walrus is shot. The Greatest is no more. Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Muhammad Ali. These three icons changed not only the worlds of music, film, and sports, but the world itself. Their faces were known everywhere, in every nation, across every culture. And their stories became larger than life-until their lives spun out of control at the hands of those they most trusted. In Killing the Legends, Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard...

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart...

A Harlem high school dropout escapes from a gang of punks into a boxing gym, where he learns that being a contender is hard and often discouraging work, but that you don't know anything until you try.

A biography of an Olympic gold medalist, the former heavyweight champion...and one of the most influential people of our time. His style changed boxing. His attitude shook the world.

"Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius' family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training...

Boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard chronicles his personal and professional life, reflecting on the people and events that have influenced him and discussing his childhood, the impact boxing has had on his life, his personal and professional accomplishments, his Olympic victories, his grueling training, his relationships, and other related topics.

Frankie is a former boxing manager, who initially refuses to train Maggie due to her gender and age. With her talent and his coaching the spirited young fighter rises through the ranks of women's boxing, the pair form a touching bond in the process.

"A stolen bicycle led twelve-year-old Cassius Clay to his first boxing teacher. He spent endless hours training, determined that he would one day become the heavyweight champion of the world. In 1964 he beat Sonny Liston to make his prediction come true. When Ali refused to fight in the Vietnam War, his title was stripped from him, and he was banned from boxing. But just a few years later, he made an incredible comeback. Find out how alie became...

A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD. From award-winning author Willy Vlautin, comes this moving novel about a young ranch hand who goes on a quest to become a champion boxer to prove his worth. Horace Hopper is a half-Paiute, half-Irish ranch hand who wants to be somebody. He's spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace...