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The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America
- Narrated by: Denny Delk
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
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Publisher's summary
Elliott J. Gorn's The Manly Art tells the story of boxing's origins and the sport's place in American culture. When first published in 1986, the book helped shape the ways historians write about American sport and culture, expanding scholarly boundaries by exploring masculinity as an historical subject and by suggesting that social categories like gender, class, and ethnicity can be understood only in relation to each other.
This updated edition of Gorn's highly influential history of the early prize rings features a new afterword, the author's meditation on the ways in which studies of sport, gender, and popular culture have changed in the quarter century since the book was first published. An updated bibliography ensures that The Manly Art will remain a vital resource for a new generation.
"It didn't occur to me until fairly late in the work that I was writing a book about the beginnings of a national celebrity culture. By 1860, a few boxers had become heroes to working-class men, and big fights drew considerable newspaper coverage, most of it quite negative since the whole enterprise was illegal. But a generation later, toward the end of the century, the great John L. Sullivan of Boston had become the nation's first true sports celebrity, an American icon. The likes of poet Vachel Lindsay and novelist Theodore Dreiser lionized him - Dreiser called him 'a sort of prize fighting J. P. Morgan' - and Ernest Thompson Seton, founder of the Boy Scouts, noted approvingly that he never met a lad who would not rather be Sullivan than Leo Tolstoy." (From the Afterword to the Updated Edition)
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Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life.
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Narration Speed...It's Half the Battle
- By B. Westman on 03-21-17
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The Proud Tower
- A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914
- By: Barbara W. Tuchman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The fateful quarter-century leading up to World War I was a time when the world of privilege still existed in Olympian luxury and the world of protest was heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate. The age was the climax of a century of the most accelerated rate of change in history, a cataclysmic shaping of destiny.
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Fascinating history
- By Doug on 02-18-07
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Striking Distance
- Bruce Lee & the Dawn of Martial Arts in America
- By: Charles Russo
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the Chinese calendar, 1964 was the Year of the Green Dragon. It would be a challenging and eventful year for Bruce Lee. He would broadcast his dissenting view before the first great international martial arts gathering and then defend it by facing down Chinatown's young ace kung fu practitioner in a legendary behind-closed-doors, high-noon-style showdown. The Year of the Green Dragon saw the dawn of martial arts in America and the rise of an icon.
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Needs a direction
- By Dave R. on 11-13-18
By: Charles Russo
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Harlem
- The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America
- By: Jonathan Gill
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of black America, Harlem's 20th-century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place.
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Very Interesting.
- By Joyce Mirowski on 06-05-20
By: Jonathan Gill
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Madness Rules the Hour
- Charleston, 1860, and the Mania for War
- By: Paul Starobin
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1860, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the combustible spirit of the South. No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat to the bonds barely holding together the Union. And so, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: They could submit to abolition - or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow.
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Madness Rules The Hour ...once more
- By Anonymous User on 05-06-21
By: Paul Starobin
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New World Coming
- The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Jazz. Bootleggers. Flappers. Talkies. Model T Fords. Lindbergh's history-making flight over the Atlantic. The 1920s was also the decade of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, social conflict, and the birth of organized crime.
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My High School History Class Never Told
- By Charles Stembridge on 06-29-04
By: Nathan Miller
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Death in the Haymarket
- A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America
- By: James Green
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded at a Chicago labor rally, wounding dozens of policemen, seven of whom eventually died. A wave of mass hysteria swept the country, leading to a sensational trial that culminated in four controversial executions and dealt a blow to the labor movement from which it would take decades to recover. Historian James Green recounts the rise of the first great labor movement in the wake of the Civil War and brings to life an epic 20-year struggle for the eight-hour workday.
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A must for anyone who enjoys labor history
- By Taurus on 01-10-22
By: James Green
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Foundation
- The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors: The History of England, Book 1
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Foundation the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past - a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house.
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The Most Annoying Narrator EVER
- By JudieBee on 12-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan
- The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate
- By: Rick Bowers
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist Rick Bowers has contributed to Time, The Washington Post, and USA Today, and his fascinating Spies of Mississippi—about the spy network that tried to take down the Civil Rights Movement—earned a starred review from Booklist. Here, Bowers examines how, in the late 1940s, The Adventures of Superman radio show struck a powerful blow to the Ku Klux Klan when Superman aired episodes pitting the hero against the Klan in an effort to teach young listeners to stand up to bigotry.
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The willingness to visit the truth
- By David Alexander McDonald on 03-13-24
By: Rick Bowers
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Frederick Douglass
- Prophet of Freedom
- By: David W. Blight
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 36 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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As a young man, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence, he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.
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The sound of rollerskating in sand
- By Rico X Ludovici on 02-06-19
By: David W. Blight
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The Black Russian
- By: Vladimir Alexandrov
- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Black Russian is the incredible story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick sought greater freedom in London, then crisscrossed Europe, and - in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time - went to Russia in 1899. Because he found no color line there, Frederick made Moscow his home. He renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas, married twice, acquired a mistress, and took Russian citizenship.
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US Born African Descendant 2 Russian Citizenship
- By Sheila Gibson on 03-14-15
What listeners say about The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- TW
- 02-11-14
Excellent History of Our Not-So-Ancient Past
What made the experience of listening to The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America the most enjoyable?
The reader does an excellent job imitating voices and reporting that helps to bring the reader into the past of a fledgling America.
Which scene was your favorite?
Learning how and why the Irish immigrants became known for boxing really put things into perspective. Not only does this enrich my understanding of the past, but it enriches my understanding of our society and the various socio-economic classes today.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
The fire that forged the American spirit.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Chris Moore
- 08-08-21
I tried.
I love boxing and find the history of bare-Knuckle fascinating. This book is just simply to dry. If you're a boxing aficionado, this book will be right up your alley.
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