Body of work: Muhammad the mountain

07 June 2016 - 10:32 By Tymon Smith

Hunter S Thompson once wrote of Muhammad Ali: "He came, he saw, and if he didn't entirely conquer - he came as close as anybody we're likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation. Res ipsa loquitur. (The thing speaks for itself.)"Few figures have inspired as much good copy as Ali. Here's our pick of the best of the books on The Greatest.G.O.A.TThe Holy Grail of Ali books, this glossy, heavyweight Taschen production was released in 2004 after four years in the making. Produced with the participation of Ali and combining rare archival photographs, graphic artwork, articles and essays, the original edition of the book now retails for between $2500 (roughly R37700) and $5500. Taschen did a cheaper $120 re-release in 2010 under the full title Greatest of All Time.The Greatest: My Own Story by Muhummad Ali with Richard Durham edited by Toni MorrisonReleased in 1975, the year after Ali's victory over George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle, Ali's own account of his life was described by Ishmael Reed in the New York Times as "a splendid action-packed hurricane of a book; a bone-crushing, quality thriller that belongs in the same class as autobiographies written by Booker T Washington, Frederick Douglass and James Weldon Johnson."The Fight by Norman MailerMailer at his wryly comic best as he recounts his time in then-Zaire covering the Ali-Foreman bout. His account of Foreman's knockout is worth the price alone: " He went over like a six-foot 60 -year-old butler who has just heard tragic news."King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero by David RemnickNew Yorker editor David Remnick sets his sights on the legend of Ali. Focusing on Ali's early career and ending with his victory over Sonny Liston in 1964, Remnick creates a gripping portrait of the man and his times. Writing on the New Yorker website on Saturday, Remnick described Ali as "the most fantastical American figure of his era, a self-invented character of such physical wit, political defiance, global fame and sheer originality that no novelist you might name would dare conceive him".Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties by Mike Marqusee (2000)The late, great sports writer Mike Marqusee examines Ali in the context of the 1960s and the rise of black consciousness.To read selections of some of the best articles about Muhammad Ali visit www.nymag.com and www.longform.org, which have assembled a selection ranging from AJ Liebling to Hunter S Thompson, Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton, LeRoi Jones, Joyce Carol Oates and others...

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