Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship » (Reprint)

Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell were must-see TV long before that phrase became ubiquitous. Individually interesting, together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different — young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate and Cosell an editor of his university's law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: Both were, above all, performers who covered up their deep personal insecurities by demanding — loudly and often — public acclaim. Theirs was an extraordinary alliance that produced drama, comedy, controversy, and a mutual respect that helped shape both men's lives.

Dave Kindred — uniquely equipped to tell the Ali-Cosell story after a decades-long intimate working relationship with both men — re-creates their unlikely connection in ways never before attempted. From their first meeting in 1962 through Ali's controversial conversion to Islam and refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army (the right for him to do both was publicly defended by Cosell), Kindred explores both the heroics that created the men's upward trajectories and the demons that brought them to sadness in their later lives. Kindred draws on his experiences with Ali and Cosell, fresh reporting, and interviews with scores of key personalities — including the families of both. In the process, Kindred breaks new ground in our understanding of these two unique men. The book presents Ali not as a mythological character but as a man in whole, and it shows Cosell not in caricature but in faithful scale. With vivid scenes, poignant dialogue, and new interpretations of historical events, this is a biography that is novelistically engrossing — a richly evocative portrait of the friendship that shaped two giants and changed sports and television forever.

The New York Times - Budd Schulberg

Kindred sees Cosell, warts and all, with the clear eyes of a trained observer - and no man had more singular warts than Cosell. The author also expresses love, admiration and awe for his longtime friend Ali. But the dead-on honesty that has characterized Kindred's career, from The Courier-Journal to The Washington Post to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and his many sports books, is reflected in his view of Ali the man, with all his flaws and his inflated narcissism. He is the black man who famously tells the white world, "I don't have to be what you want me to be," and if some innocent and not-so-innocent women and some well-meaning men are blindsided by his runaway hubris, well, Kindred is not afraid to say, that's the price one may have to pay when entering the trajectory of this human meteor.

Author's Note     xi
Prologue: They Charmed and Bedeviled Us     1
Dreaming
"Bound Together By a Common Sympathy"     11
"America Was in Everybody's Mouth"     14
"You Got a Little Joe Louis There"     30
"Liston is a Tramp, I'm the Champ"     45
"The Black Man's White Man"     61
"I Don't Have to Be What You Want Me to Be"     71
"I Ain't Got Nothing Against Them Viet Cong"     94
Climbing
"We Don't Want to Live With the White Man"     119
"Tel-e-Vision!"     140
"You'll Never Really Know Him"     154
At the Top
"God Knows the World Wants Me to Win"     163
"I'm the Only One Who Can Tell It"     176
"I Ain't Gonna Wind Up Like Malcolm X"     193
"A Twentieth-Century Torture Device"     216
"You Know You Need Me More Than I Need You"     224
Falling
"You Feelin' Any Pain, Joe, Feelin' Any Pain?"     235
"I Know Who I Am"     244
"Mother Cosell, Saving Us All From Prostitution"     252
"I'd Rather Be Punished Here Than in the Hereafter"     267
"Your Unconquerable Soul"     282
"The World's Waiting For Me"     286
"You Stood Up and Told theTruth"     297
Rising
"He's America's Only Living Saint"     307
Epilogue: "The Alpha and the Omega"     323
Acknowledgments     329
Notes     333
Bibliography     351
Index     355