Product Description

Iron Mike collects the best writing on the tumultuous fifteen-year career of the most reviled and idolized athlete in the world, Michael Gerard Tyson. Since becoming, at age nineteen, the youngest heavyweight champion in history, Tyson's dramatic rise, fall, and continuing struggle has provoked more passionate writing, both in and out of the sports pages, than that of any other boxer since Muhammad Ali. Iron Mike is about more than boxing. Like no other athlete, Mike Tyson is at the nexus of America's cultural anxieties about race, class, masculinity, violence, and celebrity; like no other athlete his story of high drama and low comedy inspires writers to wrestle with these themes, with Tyson often no more than the occasion for the writer's own preoccupations. And Tyson has provided many such occasions: his rise to the Undisputed World Heavyweight Championship at age twenty-one; his rocky marriage to Robin Givens; his controversial conviction for the rape of Desiree Washington; his return to boxing and reclamation of the WBC and WBA belts; his biting of Evander Holyfield. Iron Mike is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a man who, for better and worse, is one of the most recognizable, popular, and defining icons of our time. The book includes selections from Joyce Carol Oates, Pete Hamill, Jose Torres, Pete Dexter, Phil Berger, Christopher Hitchens, Robert Lipsyte, Dave Anderson, Jonathan Yardley, Richard Rodriguez, Katherine Dunn, Budd Schulberg, William Plummer, David Remnick, Keith Botsworth, and others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #302277 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This anthology paints a varied and even-sided portrait of the enigmatic heavyweight's career. Arranged chronologically, the essays cover Tyson and other characters in his life from the time that he was training with Cus D'Amato to the prefight antics this past June. Though many of the essays are vehemently either pro- or anti- Tyson, the reader gets a fair and fairly complete picture of Tyson as, for the most part, the opinions in the pieces are varied. There are many quality articles by famous writers, including Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Lipsyte, but perhaps the most interesting essays are penned by associates of Tyson, including Jose Torres (light heavyweight champion, a former Boxing Commissioner, Tyson biographer, and D'Amato prot‚g‚) and Rudy Gonzales, Tyson's chauffeur, whose piece from The Inner Ring (coauthored by Martin A. Feigenbaum), about how Don King's camp wooed Tyson and helped end his marriage, is one of the most compelling and insightful entries here. The book loses steam about three quarters of the way through just as Tyson's career itself declined and the fighter became a caricature of himself. Everything up to the Tyson-Lewis prefight news conference is included, but because it lacks a final article about the humiliating and potentially career-ending fight, this otherwise strong work feels incomplete.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In addition to inspiring fear and a record number of pay-per-view "buys" in the ring, Tyson has generated a huge body of sports writing, some memorable, some muzzy headed. Arguably the last heavyweight champion to have been the biggest thing in sports, Tyson went from ex-street thug to 20-year-old champion, Pepsi spokesman, and (briefly) husband of actress Robin Givens and neighbor of Donald Trump. Since Tyson first lost his title to Buster Douglas and, in 1992, his freedom as a convicted rapist, his life has been an escalating freak show. All the stages of Mike (except the sad latest one) are represented by O'Connor, a Thunder's Mouth editor, who, despite hinting that most criticism of Tyson is racially motivated, has gathered a relatively balanced collection of views ranging from Phil Berger on the prodigy years and aftermath to Joyce Carol Oates and others on the rape trial. In Pete Hamill's controversial prison profile, Tyson holds forth on Mao, John Quincy Adams, and Alexandre Dumas, while Gerald Early gives an incisive 1996 accounting of Tyson's strengths and weaknesses, and David Remnick makes a calm, masterly witness to the riot of the 1997 "Ear" fight. Times writer Robert Lipsyte's columns from the 1990s show an increasingly labored attempt to find a fresh angle on Mike's explosions. Several Tyson biographies are excerpted here, including Peter Heller's Bad Intentions, which remains the smartest extended work on Tyson. With a final piece by Tyson's one-time chauffeur, this worthwhile collection hits the street already a step behind its humbled subject's volatile life. Nathan Ward, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
As a young man from New York's worst neighborhoods, working under the tutelage of legendary trainer Cus D'Amato, boxer Mike Tyson appeared to be a rags-to-riches story in the making, but then D'Amato died, and the young fighter lost direction. Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history, but his life outside the ring devolved into a septic tank of divorces, assaults, and prison. Collected here and presented in chronological order are nearly three dozen essays on Tyson by some of sports journalism's best: Pete Hamill, Robert Lipsyte, and many others. The contrast among the pieces is a startling reminder of Tyson's life--from William Plummer's opening article, which appeared in 1985 and profiled the young, sympathetic fighter, through Joyce Carol Oates' analysis of Tyson's rape conviction in 1992. Given his recent defeat by Lennox Lewis, Tyson's celebrity could be waning, but don't count on it: he may have become a repellant figure to many, but his life has always made good reading. Wes Lukowsky
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