The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini

The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini

From the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of Namath and Pistol comes another remarkable biographyâ€”the life of Ray â€œBoom Boomâ€ Mancini.

FRANK SINATRA FAWNED OVER HIM. WARREN ZEVON WROTE A TRIBUTE SONG. Sylvester Stallone produced his life story as a movie of the week. In the 1980s, Ray â€œBoom Boomâ€ Mancini wasnâ€™t merely the lightweight champ. An adoring public considered him a national hero, the real Rocky.

From the mobbed-up steel city of Youngstown, Ohio, Mancini was cast as the savior of a sport: a righteous kid in a corrupt game, symbolically potent and demographically perfect, the last white ethnic. He fought for those left behind in busted-out mill towns across America. But most of all, he fought for his father. Lenny Manciniâ€”the original Boom Boom, as he was calledâ€”had been a lightweight contender himself. But the elder Manciniâ€™s dream ended on a battlefield in November 1944, when fragments from a German mortar shell nearly killed him. Almost four decades later, Ray promised to win the title his father could not. What came of that vow was a feel-good fable for network television.

But it all came apart November 13, 1982, in a brutal battle at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Manciniâ€™s obscure Korean challenger, Duk Koo Kim, went down in the 14th round and never regained consciousness. Three months later, Kimâ€™s despondent mother took her own life. The deaths would haunt Ray and ruin his carefully crafted image, suddenly transforming boxingâ€™s All-American Boy into a pariah.

Now, thirty years after that nationally televised bout, Mark Kriegel finally uncovers the storyâ€™s full dimensions. In tracking the Mancini and Kim families across generations, Kriegel exacts confessions and excavates mysteriesâ€”from the killing of Manciniâ€™s brother to the fate of Kimâ€™s son. In scenes both brutal and tender, the narrative moves from Youngstown to New York, Vegas to Seoul, Reno to Hollywood, where the inevitably romantic idea of a fighter comes up against reality.

With the vivid style and deep reporting that have earned him renown as a biographer, Kriegel has written a fast-paced epic. The Good Son is an intimate history, a saga of fathers and fighters, loss and redemption.
Country USA
Manufacturer Free Press
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber 0743286359_Good
ReleaseDate 2012-09-18
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780743286350

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Free Press
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	0743286359_Good
ReleaseDate	2012-09-18
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780743286350