The Life and Crimes of Don King

An updated edition of award-winning columnist Jack Newfield’s best-selling biography of America’s boxing mogul, the source for the Emmy-winning movie Don King: Only in America.

When Jack Newfield’s unauthorized biography of Don King first appeared in 1995 it was hailed as one of the most important pieces of sports journalism of the decade. The HBO movie based on the book continues to be a television favorite. Now, for the first time, The Life and Crimes of Don King is available in paperback.

Jack Newfield provided a new introduction and an extensive epilogue--”The Shame of Boxing in America”--for this new edition.

Here’s what critics had to say about the earlier edition:

“Jack Newfield is a writer who understands how to celebrate the rich complexity of American life while pulling the covers off of those monsters who threaten its very essence. In The Life and Crimes of Don King, he provides us with a book that stings in every direction—across class, race, profession, gender, religion, national boundaries, media, and law enforcement. We learn that Don King is an American so purely made of charisma and con that no one could have invented him.”


--STANLEY CROUCH, New York Daily News columnist

“It is difficult to imagine anyone better suited to tell the fascinating tale of Don King’s life than Jack Newfield. In The Life and Crimes of Don King Newfield has brilliantly captured the complex man beneath the flamboyant image and in the process produced an absolutely fabulous story,”


--DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian

“Jac Newfield brings a reporter’s craft and fan’s love of boxing to this study of the complex, brilliant promoter Don King. Newfield continues the tradition of great writers like A. J. Liebling, Budd Schulberg, and Norman Mailer who have brought their sharp focus to the world of boxing.”


—CHARLIE ROSE, PBS host