Approaching Ali
A Reclamation in Three Acts
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The single most intimate look at Muhammad Ali’s retirement, told through the story of an unexpected, powerful and life-changing friendship
In 1988, then struggling writer and video store worker Davis Miller drove to Muhammad Ali’s mother’s modest Louisville house, knocked on the door, and introduced himself to his childhood idol. Now, all these years later, the two friends have an uncommon bond, the sort that can be fashioned only in serendipitous ways and fortified through shared experiences. Miller draws from his remarkable moments with The Champ to give us a beautifully written portrait of a great man physically devastated but spiritually young—playing mischievous tricks on unsuspecting guests, performing sleight of hand for any willing audience, and walking ten miles each way to grab an ice cream sundae. Informed by great literary journalists such as Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, and Gay Talese, but in a timeless style that is distinctly his own, Miller gives us a series of extraordinary stories that coalesce into an unprecedentedly humanizing, intimate, and tenderly observed portrait of one of the world’s most loved men.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Miller (The Tao of Bruce Lee) here explores his long fascination with boxing icon Muhammad Ali and their eventual friendship. As a sickly, undersized teenager in North Carolina in the 1960s, Miller clung to the exploits of Ali as an escape from the loss of his mother and the bullying he suffered. Throughout various reinventions competitive kickboxer, journalist, editor, father Miller never lost his focus on Ali and eventually became enough of an intimate to serve as the Boswell of the champ's post-boxing life, which was increasingly affected by Parkinson's syndrome. Hero worship provides the impetus for the memoir, but Miller doesn't ignore Ali's philandering and his abuse of Joe Frazier, or the mounting damage wrought by Parkinson's. In clear, observant prose, Miller details how the most outspoken and graceful heavyweight of all time now struggles to knot a tie or make himself understood. Yet in the wreck of "the black Superman," Miller discovers and celebrates a spiritual Ali, a bodhisattva molded by the unlikely path of boxing and the Nation of Islam. Miller writes affectingly of his own life as well, a tactic that deepens the impressionistic swirl of his meetings with Ali. Readers may not share Miller's adulation, but his engagement and journalistic integrity provide a unique perspective on a man he portrays as a hero for the world.
