Benny Leonard was arguably the greatest lightweight champion of all time. With superb boxing skills and potent punching power, he fought over 200 times and suffered just five defeats. He spent his boyhood in a crime-ridden ghetto in Manhattan's Lower East Side and was the greatest of a long line of Jewish boxers to emerge from the slums. Leonard was still only 19 when he knocked out Freddie Welsh to become world lightweight king in 1917. He defended the title eight times and retired as und...

Say hello to Rocky Marciano, the world's only undefeated heavyweight champion, a guy called Rocky Marciano. With just a 67-inch reach, two left feet and under six feet tall, Marciano blasted his way to 49 wins, 43 inside the distance. You could knock him down but you couldn't knock him out. Marciano KO'd Jersey Joe Walcott in a 1952 thriller to become world champion. Defending his title five times, he brought the million-dollar gate back to boxing in 1955 when he crushed Archie Moore in hi...

Over 25 years Sugar Ray Robinson ruled three divisions, from lightweight to middleweight. As a kid he had danced for pennies on the streets of Harlem, and he danced again in the ring from New York and Vegas to Paris and back again. After a brilliant amateur career he turned pro in 1940 and won his first 40 contests before Jake LaMotta snapped his streak of 123 fights. He was unbeaten over the next nine years and would beat LaMotta in five of their six fights, taking his middleweight title....

They called Max Baer the "Clown Prince of Boxing," but trainer Ray Arcel remembered a night in 1933 when he worked Baer's corner in what was probably Max's greatest triumph, the night he smashed Max Schmeling to defeat in 10 brutal rounds. That was no clown. A year later, Baer was heavyweight champion of the world. From a $4 a day foundry worker, Baer's rise was rapid. He bought so many suits he couldn't keep track of them; wore a new hat every week; bought a house like a hotel. Arcel crie...

Henry Armstrong: Boxing's Super Champ is the story of arguably the most incredible fighter in the history of boxing - told by one of the few surviving writers to have been around during Armstrong's unique world championship reign. When Henry had his arm raised on 17 August 1938, after winning a blood-spattered 15-round decision over Lou Ambers, he became the first boxer to simultaneously hold world titles at three different weights - and somehow he managed the feat in an era of ju...

They still call it the most sensational fight ever for the world heavyweight championship, between champion Jack Dempsey and his hammer-fisted Argentine challenger, Luis Angel Firpo. Back in the Roaring Twenties, 85,000 packed into New York's Polo Grounds to see all three minutes 57 seconds of it. Nobody asked for their money back. In the first round Firpo was floored seven times, but got up to deck the champion, then knocked him clean into the press section. Pushed back into the ring as t...

This is a cradle-to-grave biography of Mickey Walker, former welterweight (1922-1926) and middleweight champion (1926-1931) of the world, one of the greatest fighters in ring history. He fought at a time when boxing was a major sport with only eight championships, and he held two of them over a nine-year period. He fought at a time when each weight division was jammed with good fighters, and he fought them all from welterweight up to heavyweight, frequently being outweighed 20 to 30 pounds...

An absorbing picaresque journey through 1870s Kansas...in a prose that is at times sheer lyrical rapture, and other times tough and lean as sinew... Jarrett's ravishing prose style lifts these characters above their everydayness into a realm of transcendence borne within James's mind, as his innate nobility shines despite a daily life crammed with people bent on killing one another.-Johnny Payne, author of the 2021 IBPA Ben Franklin Gold Winner,

Obtaining an accurate and comprehensive overview of performance throughout the firm is no easy undertaking - there are numerous aspects of the firm to inspect and many varying streams of information to consider. From individual partner performance to firm-wide cash flow, correctly measuring and managing performance involves a keen eye on both the micro and macro aspects of the firm. Measuring and Managing Performance for Law Firms offers an overview of the measurement and metrics that firm...

Place, Race and Politics presents an integrated analysis of the social and political processes that combined to construct a media-driven ‘crisis’ concerning African youth crime in the city of Melbourne, Australia.Combining original research and analysis alongside published sources, the authors carefully dissect the anatomy of a racialized and politicized public discourse and delve into the profound impact of this on African-Australian communities in Melbourne. Drawing on p...

The Winter 2024-25 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”The Winter 2024-25 Issue, edited by John Skoyles, features poetry and prose by Joan Silber, Timothy Liu, Pádraig Ó Tuam...

Life can be hard. Prayer doesn't have to be.Whatever is going on with you right now, God is actually interested. And yet connecting with God through prayer can often feel foreign, challenging, or beyond our reach.But here's the thing: You're already awesome at prayer.You just don't know it . . . yet.Through over twenty years of pastoring and writing, Jarrett Stevens has made it his mission to connect the dots between God and our everyday live...