Adam J. Pollack

When this subtitle says "the career of", take it seriously. Unless one counts his stage career and his alcoholism, you'll learn nary a thing about Sullivan outside the ring. The book is a product of exhaustive research in period newspapers and is a great source for information on Sullivan's boxing career, but is a tedious and repetitive read for the most part. The author's signature approach is to narrate the fights by presenting parallel accounts from two or three newspapers round-by-round. The resulting dissonance serves mostly to make one lose one's faith in newspapers. Uninteresting tangents abound; many of Sullivan's opponents and, indeed, one he never fought, Australia's Peter Jackson, have their careers set out in excruciating detail. In too many cases even exhibition bouts Sullivan fought against audience members are given full treatment. Meanwhile, Sullivan's arguably best-known fight, his defeat by Jim Corbett, is dismissed in a few sentences because it doesn't fit the author's narrative that Sullivan was a great fighter. Many observers thought that John L. was indeed a great fighter, but many did not; longtime Ring magazine editor Nat Fleischer barely included Sullivan near the bottom of his list of the ten all-time greatest heavyweights, and any such voices are not just muted, they are ignored. Try John Isenberg's life-and-times for a much more well-rounded , objective, and readable account of Sullivan in whole.… (más)