The Lost Legacy of Muhammad Ali

With so many books droolingly digging up bones of our great American heroes (the income alone from the anti-Kennedy volumes would fill a bank) it is a refreshing relief to find one book which contemplates all sides of this great man, who only continues to grow in stature and power. Why in Mr. Bush's anti-Islamic Empire must we ignore and "lose" our greatest and most humane American? Instead of any other life assessment of Mr. Ali, please reflect upon this by Hauser, who wrote so well in His Life and His Times, considering deeply the inner life of this most public man. Now, years later, removed apparently from direct contact with his subject, Mr. Hauser fairly considers all aspects and opinions and addresses them as would Aristotle, or Aquinas. We have here perhaps the most comprehensive and reasoned report to date. Examine it closely. Then hear Ossie Davis's reading of Soul of the Butterfly, and be revived, resurrected, refreed and ready to work for peace and for justice once more.

This is, along with Hauser's biography of Ali, probably the best and "closest to the truth" book we have on the Greatest of All Time. Hauser is an honest sports journalist who, although obviously enamored of his subject, never tries to hide the flaws of this internationally renowned and original personality. Indeed, more than cynical would-be writers like Mark Kram (whom Hauser addresses directly in this book), he has come to that place so many fans, writers and adoring celebrities never could: the actual Ali behind all that myth, bravado and unmatched boxing skill. Through his exhaustively readable collection of quotations from not only Ali himself but sports figures like Reggie Jackson, Ernie Terrell, Angelo Dundee, Ron Lyle, Sylvester Stallone (and of course Joe Frazier), the confused but courageous core of the man then and now emerges. What is revealed is a wildly exuberant, spiritual, sometimes volatile and sometimes serene man who himself could often not tell the difference between himself and the fictions created about him. His courageous refusal, at any cost, of being inducted into the draft to fight in Vietnam is juxtaposed with his readiness to do things like call Joe Louis an "Uncle Tom" and shoot off his mouth whenever he felt himself or his ego threatened. For one of the toughest SOBs to ever live, Muhammad Ali had a very pronounced sensitive side, and his excessive showmanship and extreme bravery were often manifestations of a need to hide this side of himself. As a result, he made quite a few enemies. His uncritical allegiance to the Nation of Islam is also shown for what it was; a frenzied response of a black athlete to show white America that he was not afraid to adopt radical, dangerous positions and still kick butt in the ring. The essentially religious side of Ali emerged in later life, and the obvious time out of Parkinsons ripped him away from the cameras to reflect on some of his more radical beliefs (apartheid). What people need to remember is that this is a guy who grew up in Louisville Kentucky when racism against blacks was it's height. That explains quite a bit about "the true nature of his beliefs". An endlessly entertaining, superb book on the man seen through the eyes of others and himself by an insider.

Thomas Hauser wrote 'Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times' in 1991 and that work continues to be the definitive research piece, plus oral history, on the life of the greatest athlete of the last one hundred years and almost certainly longer. Having edited 'GOAT: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali', I'm well aware of how important Hauser's landmark work has been in documenting, for the first time, much of the finer details around Ali's life and achievements, often with the direct evidence of the key figures around Ali over the key periods of his life. I'd urge any Ali, civil rights or black history student to start with that master work if you want to learn more about what made Cassius Clay and then Muhammad Ali, truly into the current day Ali. During that mid-1990s period Hauser himself became, in the words of Sports Illustrated and Esquire writer, the late Mark Kram, the Boswell figure in the polishing of the Ali mythology, but from what one gathers, Hauser no longer has a direct working relationship with Muhammad Ali nor with those within Ali's immediate business and family circle. This pushes him away from the Ali epicentre, but also gives him the context and the opportunity to take a new, revisionist line on Ali, hence the basic theme of this new book. Ali emerged at a time of the greatest political foment in modern American history. His outspoken willingness to talk of black pride from the early 1960s, his public conversion to Islam in February 1964 (privately, he converted as far back as 1961) and his unwillingness to step forward and be conscripted into the US Armed Forces in 1967, became the now iconic moments that put him at the very centre of black and left liberal counter-culture in the 1960s. He won himself the support of leaders as diverse as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver and internationally, Kwame Nkrumah and Gamal Abdel Nasser invited him to their countries in 1964; members of the American political and media establishment like Ramsey Clark, William Buckley and James Schlesinger recognised the sincerity of his stance. The entertainment industry lionised him; writers like George Plimpton, Hunter Thompson and Norman Mailer wrote about him; singers like Bob Dylan and later George Benson, sang about him; philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote to him to express his support for Ali's Vietnam stance; perhaps most poignantly of all, ensconced in a tiny cell on Robben Island from 1964 onwards, Nelson Mandela heard of Ali's exploits, quickly saw him as a genuine hero and noted this this was someone to watch and admire. In short, Ali became the most potent and popular symbol of resistance to the Vietnam War and became the darling not just of the far left, but liberals and black emancipation movements everywhere. Since then, Ali has (post-Parkinson's especially) become something altogether different: a symbol of peace (UN Messenger of Peace to be yet more specific), pure example of the fragility of the human condition and comm