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...

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...

**2020 SPLATTERPUNK AWARD NOMINATED**Tip it on back…Some call it courage in a bottle while others perceive it as the devil's cocktail. Alcohol comes in all types, bringing along with it the temptation of sin, the eagerness of confusion and the psychological bombardment on the mind forcing us to play a game between life and death.15 authors dive deep in the subconscious where the demons swim, blinding our judgment and guiding us to m...

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...

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...

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....

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,

The importance of play for healthy development is undeniable. Aspects of play have been linked to the development of social skills, health and fitness, motivation, curiosity, innovation, imagination, and problem solving. Both theory and research suggest that play of various types is critical for healthy development and that playfulness is an important quality across the life span. However, opportunities to play and quality of play facilities in schools, after-school programs, childcare cen...

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...

Do you kind of hate it when you risk a little vulnerability with someone—you share some hard thing you're going through, some spiritual dry spell, some tender concern—and they say something like "You should pray about it!" . . . as if that's the easiest thing in the world and praying through hard things doesn't feel like a high-risk undertaking. Jarrett Stevens has been helping people find language for prayer over the course of a few decades. He's discovered along the way that prayer is mo...