Black is Best

Before he was Muhammad Ali, there was the riddle of Cassius Clay.

In 1967, Jack Olsen wrote the very first biography of the man who would become the most recognizable athlete on earth. Sports Illustrated's editors called it one of the best sports biographies of all time. More than fifty years later, it remains indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand how Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali — and what that transformation revealed about America.

When Clay defeated Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship in 1964, the press embraced him as a clean-cut kid who would restore wholesomeness to boxing. Three years later, that image was in ruins. His conversion to Islam, his outspoken support of Black Power, his inflammatory statements about Vietnam, and his refusal to be drafted had made him one of the most vilified men in America. The same public that had cheered him now called him a traitor.

Jack Olsen went deeper than the public debate. He talked at length with those who knew Clay most intimately: his family, his first boxing coach, his trainer, his physician, the businessmen who gave him his start, and dozens of others. He followed and interviewed Clay himself extensively. What emerged was a portrait of startling complexity.

"Clay's personality," Olsen wrote, "is like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were cut by a drunken carpenter, a jumbled collection of moods and attitudes that do not seem to interlock."

Behind the bravado, behind the inflammatory statements, behind the hundreds of thousands of words written about him, Olsen found something unexpected: a troubled, sensitive young man filled with doubts, fears, and private dreams, still searching for his own identity at the precise moment history was demanding he become a symbol.

Jack Olsen, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer called "an American treasure," wrote this book at the height of his powers as a journalist. It shows on every page.