Following the recent release of Hollywood's horrible 'ALI' movie, we have yet another book attempting to ride the Ali bandwagon. The best thing about this book is that it contains a lot of cool photographs that I hadn't seen before. Very little of the text is new or insightful, though. With few exceptions, these people just retrace the same old tired topics. Ali refused to go to Vietnam, Ali won the heavyweight title, Ali is funny, Ali is kind, etc... True, but how many different times do I need to hear somebody say this? Of all the people chosen to comment in this book, few of them have anything unique to say about the man. In addition, a lot of these people don't really seem to know fact from legend. For example, several references are made to the story about Ali throwing his Olympic medal into the river. This is complete fiction, dreamed up for the '70's book and movie, "The Greatest". In reality, he just lost the medal somewhere. There are a few good entries here, such as the ones by referee Arthur Mercante, Bert Sugar, Angelo Dundee, daughter Hana, ex-wife Veronica, and several people who fought against or helped train Muhammad. These cover less than 1/2 the book, though. Instead of getting some redneck comedian who's never even met the man, why not get Joe Frazier or Ken Norton or George Foreman or Ali's current wife Lonnie or his best friend Howard Bingham to comment? How about his brother, Rahman? Leon Spinks, even. The editing is atrocious, at least in the hardcover edition. If you really want to read something about Ali that's well written and well researched, I would suggest the great books 'Muhammad Ali, His Life and Times' by Thomas Hauser and 'King of the World' by David Remnick.

"Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World" is a fine documentation, which tells the story of a fine man. It was a good effort by Lennox Lewis, (a heavyweight champion), and Mark Collings; although that I didn't come across any new event or issue regarding the life of this greatest champion that sports has ever known. However, since most books that bear Ali's perspectives are hard to find in continental Europe, I was more than glad to lay my hands on this one.
I have either heard or read every story that I found on the pages of this book, yet, the refreshment it offered was great. I had a satisfactory pastime with it; and I guess that you'll cherish it too.
No matter how much you know about The Greatest, this book will certainly knit-up your weekend. The chapters are well-arranged, and the overall documentation is cute.

Muhammed Ali: Through the Eyes of the World by Mark Collings and Lennox Lewis helped me tremendously to understand the life of Muhammed Ali. This book kept me interested throughout. What was unique about this book that kept me wondering what was behind the next page was that it was told from many people's eyes, not the authors'. From his opponents to his four wives, you got the story from everyone. When someone's story started to get old, here it was, a new story. The different commentaries give you his whole life story. You hear about the way he fought, how he loved kids, his love for entertaining, his generosity, you hear it all. After reading the book I had the feeling that I knew Ali as a person. I give this book five stars. If I could, I would give it more.

This is the most comprehensive book on the " Rumble in the jungle" one can hope to get. The beauty of the book is that unlike other biographies it never loses it's touch with reality. The accurately described scenes in Ali's training camp and Ali's frustration with having to train, the boredom that a prize fighter goes through while training are all aptly revealed . Ali's psyche has been explored as in no other book. The author has also given his own brilliant account of the country that the fight took place in, Zaire. This book also has many of those things that weren't concentrated upon in "When we were kings", like the fact that Ali didn't train as hard for this fight as most fighters do for a heavyweight championship but instead was banking on his clever tricks to secure victory for himself. After reading this book, the reader would like to watch "When we were kings" again to have a better understanding of the movie, as he or she would have a greater knowledge of the events and the persons involved in the drama. Norman's deep insight of the boxing world can be gauged from the thoughts he has when he is wathcing Muhmmad Ali celebrate after his victory, "In the privacy of his bathroom, doubtless he will wince and piss blood. That is the price after many a fight. It was his pride of course to show none of this." Unlike most other white writers of his time, Norman understands and feels what makes Ali tick. The reader is taken into the thought provoking world of Ali's attitude and reason-towards his people, his religion, his profession, his opponents and his friends. All in all, this book is for anybody who is a boxing fan or a Muhammad Ali fan.

This book is a must read for fans of boxing and Muhammed Ali. Mailer brings the "Rumble in the Jungle" to life. When describing Ali's miraculous return from the dead and his role in creating the African American identity, Mailer is at his best. Something much more important than a boxing match took place. Mailer fills it with symbolism, insight and love.

This was my first experience with Norman Mailer and it certainly will not be my last. The Fight paints beautiful portraits of many of the characters, events, and locations that surrounded The Rumbe in The Jungle of 1975. His eye for detail and incredible descriptive ability made this a wonderful read. More important to boxing fans, however, is that his actual recount of the fight itself may be the single best piece of boxing writing I have ever read--it was better than watching the real thing and Mailer somehow makes the reader feel like he is both a ringside spectator and one of the combatants at the same time (a strange experience, but certainly one worth having). This book is an excellent companion to When We Were Kings and the actual video of the fight, both of which are sold by Amazon. Another interesting contrast is provided by David Remnick's King of the World, which details the months leading up to Ali's first championship fight against Sonny Liston. Ali evolved a great deal between 1964 when he was still a young, scared Cassius Clay and 1975 when he had become an older, wiser, though no less enthusiastic champion. The Fight is a great book, a must have for all boxing fans and certainly worthy of any reader who enjoys excellent character development, action, and terrific writing.

Just saw the Will Smith movie Ali. Save your seven bucks and read this book. It's much more interesting and doesn't bore you with Ali's private life. What's more, it covers almost exactly the same ground as the movie, stopping at the Foreman fight and concentrating on Ali's stand against the war.

Will Smith just can't compare to the real thing and the real Ali definitely comes through in this book which I read last year.

By far the most interesting book about Ali to date. Remnick's bio was better at capturing Ali's early personality but this has incredible stuff about the non-boxing Ali, the Ali who put everything on the line for what he believed in and risked going to jail rather than go to war for an immoral cause. The section on Ali's relationship with Malcolm X is worth the price of the book in itself. I never knew that stuff. The writing is superb and its dramatic flair grabs your attention throughout.

I have to confess that at the time Ali took his stand against the Vietnam War, I didn't agree with him. I even thought he was being disloyal to his country.

But time proved that he was right and I was misguided and I have to give him credit for being a prophet. In hindsight, he was unbelievably brave to risk it all for his principles.

This book really captures that era, the turmoil and the conflicting emotions of a generation over the war. It also presents a whole new, incredibly interesting side to Muhammad Ali. He was so much more than a boxer. He was a rebel, a visionary and a man of passion.

There's so much in this book that I did not know. Ali not only had to fight the white establishment when he opposed the war but he also angered the black establishment, most of whom supported the war even though poor blacks were being killed in much higher numbers than whites. Even Martin Luther King wouldn't come out against the war until after Ali shamed him into it. Very interesting book.

Muhammad Ali may not have been the biggest, meanest boxer of all time, but he definitely has to be one of the most determined athletes ever to set foot in a ring. This is why Myers, like Ali himself, refers to the boxer as "the greatest." Through easy reading, Myers paints a picture of what life was life for working class blacks in the near South (Louisville KY) in the 1950's. He describes the fighters who came before Ali (heroes like Joe Louis and Archie Moore), and goes into detail describing both the person and the boxing style of Ali's opponents--Liston, Frazier, Foreman and others. Myers also details the mental strategies and physical competency of Ali. It is here that the reader realizes that much of Ali's game was fought outside the ring, with not only the next opponent, but also the press, the public, an the government. Viet Nam, the draft, the Nation of Islam, the skewing of the military to induct more minorities, and the subject of 'conscientious objection' are touched upon, giving young readers a sense of the social history of the period, without the ho-hum of a history book. Myers also dissects the boxing industry, where young talent is often beaten to a senseless pulp for the sake of audiences, the mass media, and a few dollars. Myers does an excellent job of conveying the fact that the boxer from Louisville was the greatest in his determination to win, not because of his physical ability, but because of his mental agility. Myers also notes Ali's negative trait of verbally insulting and intimidating his opponent. His vicious assaulting of his opponents (especially the racial insults he spewed at Joe Frazier) set the stage for the trash-talking which is now rampant in sports at all levels. This book will intrigue a variety of students in middle school and up. It is easy to read, with enough black and white photographs and large page margins to attract even reluctant readers. It is a good introduction to what actually goes on in professional athletics, the physical and mental game of winning.

The greatest muhammad ali was a really good book. I don't like reading but i couldn't but it down. It is about Muhammad Ali and his life. He got into boxing because of a kid that stole his bike. He wanted to beat the [stuff] out of the kid. As soon as they find the theif, Ali's trainer said he had good potentail. This book goes through Ali's life as a boxer and how he started. It talks about his family too. Walter Dean Myers wrote a lot of good books like Moster, and Fallen Angels which i also read. After reading those 2 books i wasen't disapointed.

The book"THE GREATEST MUHAMMAD ALI" is one of the best books ihave ever read. When I first read this book I coudn't put it down. this book only took me a week to read and also you get information you never herd of like I never knew that Muhammad Ali's real name is Cassius Clay. When Muhammad was young he used to get beat up and his bike was stolen. After he got beat up he started taking boxing lessions. He lost most of his boxing matches when he was young. In the book you lean about others like Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson Ali never misted a practus. The reason I liked the book is because I took boxing lessons and now Iknow how to protect myself if I need to. Also you get good information on the boxers Ali's life. In the book they say that Ali has skills of most of thebest fighters that ever lived.Reading this book helped me change the way I look at things like the way I treat people andto be tough competitor at sports I play. It also helped me see how his life was as a African American boxer. I'm glad I found this awesome book to read because it made me want to be a boxer.

This book must have been obsolete already 7 years ago. DOS there is the most popular system, assembler is still 16-bit, with some "news" on few pages about "new" 32-bit one. It is ridiculous how they can annotate this book as up-to-date and for such ski-high price ! Don't fall in this trap.

I used this book in my college Assembly course, and after reviewing quite a number of other books, this is by far the best one I have seen to date. Sure, it does concentrate on the 8086/8088 processors and XT machines to quite an extent, but one must remember that even the latest Pentiums are 80x86-compatible processors (as far as the instruction sets are concerned), so that being said I feel that this book is far from obsolete. I've been programming in assembly on everything from the XT, to the HP200lx palmtop, to the Pentium-4, and this book has never failed to be an exceptional reference tool. Expensive, but well worth it!

I have been through most of this book and flipped through some of the other pages (not done yet). So far this book has been very informative. It describes older architecture to help you understand the newer architecture. Describing many of the chips that you do not see on your computer motherboard anymore, but rather integrated all into one IC. Eager to finish.

This is nothing less than the story of an African American man's struggle to define himself within the context of the 60's US black power movement exploited by a white Englishman. Mike Marqusee brings nothing new to the story of Muhamed Ali other than stilted prose and an uncritical eye. It fails as a book about boxing and is equally weak with respect to Ali's struggle with the white establishment of his day. Marqusee's attempt to embrace Ali's story serves only to water down the true struggle of an entire generation against the evils of institutional racism.

This book isn't so much about Ali as about Black radical politics of the 60's and 70's and the way Ali's public life reflected them. An excellent, thoughtful book that reads more like a monograph than a work of popular non-fiction (cf. David Remnick's "King of the World", a more accessible book with a different focus and scope). If you are interested in the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, the Black Power movement and the ways boxing historically has reflected the racial realities of its time, you will find this book engrossing and informative. If you are looking for a conventional "boxing book" (whatever that is), you will be disappointed.

I'm not a boxing fan, but after seeing the recent "Ali" movie, I was inspired to take Mike Marqusee's "Redemption Song" off my bookshelf and read it. I got the book because I heard Marqusee last year in a radio interview about Ali and the Black Power movement of the sixties and I was very interested in the culture and politics that both shaped Ali and was influenced by him.

I found "Redemption Song" a powerful and well written book that gives so much more depth than the new movie. The depth of Marqusee's research and analysis made me realize that the Ali movie would have needed to be a trilogy in order to do justice the champ's life. Ali's defiance of racist draft policies could have been an entire movie in and of itself. While "Ali" movie focuses on Ali's defiance, Marqusee's book provides the context for Ali's anti-war stance. His description and analysis makes the movie's focus a mere footnote to this part of Ali's history. When Ali argued, "Man, I ain't got not quarrel with them Vietcong," he was taking a religious and political stance on a personal, cultural/racial, and class level. He was not only echoing the developing anti-war movement, but giving voice to it, even though he never sought to be a leader within the movement. He was in sync with civil rights activists like John Lewis who complained, "I don't see how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam...to the Congo...to Africa and can't send troops to Selma, Alabama," [where the civil rights of Black people were systemically and violently denied civil rights on a daily basis.] He was in line with Martin L. King who boldly declared and preached that the war "morally and politically unjust." His refusal to participate in the bombing of thousands of innocent children and women in Vietnam and Cambodia was a part of many anti-war demonstrations in which Stokely Carmicheal described Selective Services as "white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend land they stole from red people."

Marqusee reminds us most in his book that boxing in this country was linked to issues of race and power representation. Thus, Black boxers and other sports figures like Jackie Robinson were measured, promoted, and criticized by how patriotic they were to the White power structure in this country. They were expected to be like Joe Louis who stood "as a role model--for white America, for the black middle class and for much of the left--by enlisting for military service in World War II," or an anti-communist like Robinson. But Ali becomes a bug in the system. Guided by Black nationalist ideology of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X specifically, Ali rewrote the script for how Black sports figures were to behave. He proclaimed, "I'm free to be what I want." But as Marqusee points and shows, "he did not invent himself out nothing. In his search for personal freedom he was propelled and guided by a wide array of interacting social forces." This search and influence is the heart of Marqussee's book.

I would imagine there's much that Marqusee leaves out his book. And at times he seems too apologetic about Ali's break with Malcolm X, his relationship with the conservative tide of the Nation of Islam, and the inherent contradictions between his religious convictions and his views about marriage. Marqusee could have also provided specific references for his research. His bibliography is simply not enough.

Despite these criticism, "Redemption Song" is a much needed work to offset efforts to depoliticize Ali's past. Read it before or after you see the movie.

This book jumps around to much. The information should be brought together in a smoother flow on how to program.

I really dig this book, and don't regret spend an enormous amount of money purchasing it. It's suprisingly clear and terse for a manual as complete as it is. There's only reason I can't give it five stars; there's no discussion of BIOS-level disk I/O. That's important stuff; some of us have operating systems to write!

This book is very thorough and easy to read and understand. Extremely well organized. If you are familiar with an other architecture or a high level language this book will teach you Intel assembly.

How can someone profess to be the torch bearer of the believe system which he himself oppose in letter and spirit. We all know that Elijah Muhammad was not advocating to crush the root cause of disease but that of sympton. Islam is a religion of peace it does deamonise a person because of his colour. Rather it is the other way round. Western civilization does have all the signs of decay but the root cause is not the inherent evil nature of its people rather their acts which have made them follow the wrong path. Allah Himself have said repeated in Quran that those who repent will be blessed with his mercy. To understand true Islam one should read Quran the actual and true source of all the knowledge. A book which showed the right path to people like Malcolm X!

The Evolution Of The Nation Of Islam: The Story Of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is a compelling and informative biography written by the grandson of the famous, charismatic, founder and leader of the Nation of Islam, the well-known African-American religious movement. Presenting an up-close and very personal view by the family of Elijah Muhammad's strengths and foibles, The Evolution Of The Nation Of Islam offers a vivid and memorable picture of this controversial and influential twentieth century African-American religious figure.

I read Mr. Muhammad-Ali's book with fascination and illumination. The book provides many insights into the thought and personality of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. What Muhammad-Ali offers as a grandson is the kind of first-hand experience that no amount of scholarly investigation could otherwise provide. Judging by the plates in the book, it appears that Muhammad-Ali is an accomplished artist. This is required reading for anyone who is interested in the Nation of Islam.

Michael Lieb, author of CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

this book was very interesting, it was full of laws and justice systems that everyone can learn. It talks about Cassius Clay and his bumpy road of boxing. This book also talks about how one man and his beliefs can affect a whole nation. To me this book is very inspiring and I recommend this book to anyone who is involved in politics of anykind, and just pleasure reading, this book makes you want to know more about how cruel the american justice system can really be.

For a casual boxing fan who's too young to remember Ali, this book might be a little obscure. But for boxing fans of my generation, who grew up on Ali, your boxing library won't be complete without it. Each of the 15 opponents featured here has an interesting story to tell, and the book provides a ton of material for serious boxing historians.

What is particularly interesting is how most of these men's lives were profoundly affected by their encounter(s) with Ali. Henry Cooper, for instance, a national hero in the U.K., will still always be best known for a single punch he threw in a fight he lost: the left hook that knocked Cassius Clay (as he then was) on his butt. A few of them regard Ali with love or reverence, a few with indifference, and one, in particular, with undying resentment. Overall, one gets a remarkable education on the human condition by comparing the stories of these 15 very different men. Highly recommended.