Rating: 
Summary: "A gentleman and a gentle man."
Review: For almost anyone the name Jack Dempsey is synonymous with "Champ." Born in 1895, William Harrison Dempsey came to fame in the turbulent, jingoistic, bigoted aptly named "roaring '20's." His is an authentic rags to riches saga of a young man who at 11 years of age decided he would be the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. He devoted himself full time to his chosen profession, assuming the name "Jack" from a past boxing champion that died young. Immensely strong, he worked hard at anything he did. He knew poverty, saying, "I was often a hobo, but never a bum." He literally battled his way to the top, knowing personal grief along the way, being cheated by unscrupulous managers, loving many women, marrying disasterously twice, becoming the most famous man in the world, and losing the championship in what was probably a rigged fight by the time he was 32. He maintained his dignity throughout and was as his epitaph stated, "a gentleman and a gentle man." Roger Kahn does a wonderful job of capturing Dempsey and his times. The book is not so much a biography as a history of an era, full of fascinating information. The actual fights Dempsey had play only a small part of the book, but are well presented. Kahn actually knew the champ and his respect for the man and his life show through in this very readable and worthwhile book. It deserves a wide audience. Jack Dempsey lost his championship to Gene Tunney in 1927, but he lost it with guts. His personal credo was always to fight hard, never alibi, and never whine. Not bad rules for today.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, informative, exciting, could not put it down
Review: Great book all around. I am a hardcore boxing fan who tought he knew everything about Jack Dempsey. NOT! I learned alot about the man, his life and the times he lived in. I now rate him much higher on my list of all time greats after this book. An all American hero in all respects. What a Life! I loved every page, lots of great stories from his early life and career. A lost era. Real life adventure at its best. Jack Dempsey did alot for boxing and boxers. The level of money boxers get today is a direct result of Jack Dempsey. The first true sports hero! Well written, you feel your there at ringside. Boxing in the days before Pay for View, Don King and the prince. Hardcore boxing fought by the men who loved and lived the sport.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent biography containing some decent 1920's US history
Review: I am usually a history buff (especially US history), but unfortunately some of the historical sections interpersed througout Jack Dempsey's biography is rather dull and cuts away from the action and flow of the Champ's life story. Although I like historical background about various miners' towns where Jack grew up and how their fortunes came and went, there too often appears the political accounts of some of our less distinguished presidents like the corrupt Harding and "Silent Cal" Coolidge. These sections bored me and distracted from the flow of Jack's life.As for Dempsey's biography, it is well written and researched. From his early days as a hobo to his (and the world's) first $1 million dollar gate, his life is filled with excitement and poignancy. Kahn does a very good job of balancing the action and the drama inside and outside of the ring. Jack Dempsey is portrayed as a true people's champion with very few faults if any. If this autobiography is accurate, Jack Dempsey truly can be called one of the great American sports heros. I certainly recommend this book (minus the minor gripe about the dull historical political accounts) to anyone remotely interested in the Champ.
Rating: 
Summary: High Drama and Infomercials
Review: I come from a long line of Dodger fans. I met Jackie Robinson at my first game in 1956. (My mother wrote him a letter.) I was seven, so I barely remember the moment, but it may have been the highlight of my father's life. So Roger (Boys of Summer) Kahn gets every benefit of the doubt with me, but his book on Jack Dempsey disappoints hugely. It's an odd mix of fabulous boxing material and pedestrian social commentary. And far too much of the latter. The digressions are never more ponderous than in the recounting of the new champion's trial for draft evasion in 1920. It's a compelling story of backstabbing by the first of his three wives. (Dempsey was acquitted, but taunts of "slacker" would follow him for years.) Nevertheless, for every two pages of high legal drama we get a page about the Republican convention or something. Is Kahn afraid that, having just read about the mauling of Jess Willard, his readers will find it hard to withstand a little courtroom tension? Nor does he limit his generic social history to the 1920's. He informs us long-windedly that the early settlers in Dempsey's native Colorado had to be tough. "As Hollywood reminded America so often in later times, hostile Plains Indians were a persistent menace." Duh! Does Kahn expect a large readership from Mars? When he sticks to boxing, Kahn is a champ. Against Willard in 1919 for the heavyweight championship, "Dempsey landed a left jolt to the jaw and then, in seconds, he landed the most devastating combination of punches in boxing history." Shortly thereafter: "Has there ever, before or since, been such a punch as the single left hook that destroyed half of Willard's face?" And then: "At this point, Willard's life was in peril." These are lines I won't easily forget. After Willard and the draft evasion ruckus, Dempsey fought Georges Carpentier, a Frenchman who trained secretly. Dempsey's camp professed to be concerned, perhaps about a new punch. "Others were less impressed. Damon Runyon and Westbrook Pegler suggested that Carpentier wanted secrecy because his workouts would reveal that he didn't stand a chance. Ring Lardner drove to [Carpentier's camp] from Great Neck with his nine-year-old son, John, and was turned back by the guard at the front gate. 'Mr. Carpentier is sleeping,' the guard said. A second visit produced the same result and the same excuse. Lardner drove home and wrote a line for the ages: 'M. Carpentier is practicing ten-second naps.'" Dempsey knocked out Carpentier in 1921, and the following year he took out Tommy Gibbons in Shelby, Montana (a pathetic, weird story of small-town boosterism). In 1923 it was Argentinian Luis Firpo, who famously knocked Dempsey out of the ring. Think you'd like to try boxing? Dempsey says, "I have no memory, none at all, of the most spectacular moment in my career." Then there were the two big losses to studious, pompous Gene Tunney, the first marked by the "long count" (eighteen seconds; Kahn suspects a fix). Finally, now that he'd lost, the public loved Jack Dempsey. Kahn doesn't need his ceaseless Hollywood vignettes and cheap shots at Warren Harding to convince us: this sandlot world is long gone. Nowadays Firpo's sneaker company would have too much at stake for that illegal boost by the ringside sportswriters to stand. (Dempsey should have been disqualified.) Football broadcasts record the hang time of every punt; imagine the furor that would be created by replays of the long count! The evolution of the newly domesticated sport of boxing is fascinating. The reason Willard's life was in danger is that in 1919 there was no neutral corner rule. Unlike a few years later against Tunney, Dempsey was allowed to stand over Willard and resume hammering him as soon as he got up. Every raw detail counted. Kahn's pugilistic players discuss the timeless issue of sexual abstinence vis-a-vis performance. (Kahn throws in a great Casey Stengel quote, but the one I remember is "It isn't the sex itself, it's the time it takes to find it.") Dempsey "soaked his hands in brine to toughen them. He sloshed bull urine on his face." That's on page 20; on page 188 it's the other way around. The image is irrepressible, so this slip-up in the raw detail called copy editing rankles. (Five pages from the end of the book, when anyone with a soul is reading through his own tears, we are confusingly introduced on the same page to daughter Barbara and stepdaughter Barbara. Aaugh!) Dempsey often had to fend off people who wanted to go a round or two with him. Hemingway was the worst, and here Kahn issues one of his many well-turned phrases: "Any amateur who threw down a serious challenge was delivering an insult and it is remarkable that Dempsey remained as gentle as he did with such pretenders." Kahn painstakingly explains the biomechanics of what goes on in the "squared circle called the ring." In Dempsey's artistry, you account for every movement of every part of your body. When you start a punch, relax your arm: "As the relaxed left hand speeds toward the target, suddenly close the hand with a convulsive, grabbing snap. Close that left fist with such a terrific grab, that when the knuckles smash into the target the fist and the arm and the shoulder are frozen steel-hard by the terrific grabbing tension. That convulsive, squeezing grab is the explosion." This is Dempsey's instruction book talking, but it sounds to me like Dante. I wish there was more of this. Jack Dempsey wasted no motion in his craft, but his biographer lets his guard down continually. Big Jess Willard should have been so lucky.
Rating:
Summary: High Drama and Infomercials
Review: I come from a long line of Dodger fans. I met Jackie Robinson at my first game in 1956. (My mother wrote him a letter.) I was seven, so I barely remember the moment, but it may have been the highlight of my father's life. So Roger (Boys of Summer) Kahn gets every benefit of the doubt with me, but his book on Jack Dempsey disappoints hugely. It's an odd mix of fabulous boxing material and pedestrian social commentary. And far too much of the latter. The digressions are never more ponderous than in the recounting of the new champion's trial for draft evasion in 1920. It's a compelling story of backstabbing by the first of his three wives. (Dempsey was acquitted, but taunts of "slacker" would follow him for years.) Nevertheless, for every two pages of high legal drama we get a page about the Republican convention or something. Is Kahn afraid that, having just read about the mauling of Jess Willard, his readers will find it hard to withstand a little courtroom tension? Nor does he limit his generic social history to the 1920's. He informs us long-windedly that the early settlers in Dempsey's native Colorado had to be tough. "As Hollywood reminded America so often in later times, hostile Plains Indians were a persistent menace." Duh! Does Kahn expect a large readership from Mars? When he sticks to boxing, Kahn is a champ. Against Willard in 1919 for the heavyweight championship, "Dempsey landed a left jolt to the jaw and then, in seconds, he landed the most devastating combination of punches in boxing history." Shortly thereafter: "Has there ever, before or since, been such a punch as the single left hook that destroyed half of Willard's face?" And then: "At this point, Willard's life was in peril." These are lines I won't easily forget. After Willard and the draft evasion ruckus, Dempsey fought Georges Carpentier, a Frenchman who trained secretly. Dempsey's camp professed to be concerned, perhaps about a new punch. "Others were less impressed. Damon Runyon and Westbrook Pegler suggested that Carpentier wanted secrecy because his workouts would reveal that he didn't stand a chance. Ring Lardner drove to [Carpentier's camp] from Great Neck with his nine-year-old son, John, and was turned back by the guard at the front gate. 'Mr. Carpentier is sleeping,' the guard said. A second visit produced the same result and the same excuse. Lardner drove home and wrote a line for the ages: 'M. Carpentier is practicing ten-second naps.'" Dempsey knocked out Carpentier in 1921, and the following year he took out Tommy Gibbons in Shelby, Montana (a pathetic, weird story of small-town boosterism). In 1923 it was Argentinian Luis Firpo, who famously knocked Dempsey out of the ring. Think you'd like to try boxing? Dempsey says, "I have no memory, none at all, of the most spectacular moment in my career." Then there were the two big losses to studious, pompous Gene Tunney, the first marked by the "long count" (eighteen seconds; Kahn suspects a fix). Finally, now that he'd lost, the public loved Jack Dempsey. Kahn doesn't need his ceaseless Hollywood vignettes and cheap shots at Warren Harding to convince us: this sandlot world is long gone. Nowadays Firpo's sneaker company would have too much at stake for that illegal boost by the ringside sportswriters to stand. (Dempsey should have been disqualified.) Football broadcasts record the hang time of every punt; imagine the furor that would be created by replays of the long count! The evolution of the newly domesticated sport of boxing is fascinating. The reason Willard's life was in danger is that in 1919 there was no neutral corner rule. Unlike a few years later against Tunney, Dempsey was allowed to stand over Willard and resume hammering him as soon as he got up. Every raw detail counted. Kahn's pugilistic players discuss the timeless issue of sexual abstinence vis-a-vis performance. (Kahn throws in a great Casey Stengel quote, but the one I remember is "It isn't the sex itself, it's the time it takes to find it.") Dempsey "soaked his hands in brine to toughen them. He sloshed bull urine on his face." That's on page 20; on page 188 it's the other way around. The image is irrepressible, so this slip-up in the raw detail called copy editing rankles. (Five pages from the end of the book, when anyone with a soul is reading through his own tears, we are confusingly introduced on the same page to daughter Barbara and stepdaughter Barbara. Aaugh!) Dempsey often had to fend off people who wanted to go a round or two with him. Hemingway was the worst, and here Kahn issues one of his many well-turned phrases: "Any amateur who threw down a serious challenge was delivering an insult and it is remarkable that Dempsey remained as gentle as he did with such pretenders." Kahn painstakingly explains the biomechanics of what goes on in the "squared circle called the ring." In Dempsey's artistry, you account for every movement of every part of your body. When you start a punch, relax your arm: "As the relaxed left hand speeds toward the target, suddenly close the hand with a convulsive, grabbing snap. Close that left fist with such a terrific grab, that when the knuckles smash into the target the fist and the arm and the shoulder are frozen steel-hard by the terrific grabbing tension. That convulsive, squeezing grab is the explosion." This is Dempsey's instruction book talking, but it sounds to me like Dante. I wish there was more of this. Jack Dempsey wasted no motion in his craft, but his biographer lets his guard down continually. Big Jess Willard should have been so lucky.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good book on early 20th century boxing
Review: I didn't know much about Jack Dempsey before reading this book, but I definitely learned a lot about him from this bio. Kahn portrays him as the greatest heavyweight champ ever who was not only blessed with great boxing skills but also great strength of character - imagine the guts it took to reject Al Capone's offer to fix a fight for him. The book justifiably concentrates mainly on Dempsey's fighting career which included bouts with Willard, Carpentier, Firpo, and Tunney rather than spending much time discussing his pre and post boxing life. This bio does a fine job discussing not only Dempsey but also the characters that surrounded him including his difficult first wife and the boxing promoters Rickard and Kearns. The only problem I have with this book is that because the author knew his subject personally and obviously admired him a great deal, Dempsey is portrayed as a man who was larger than life and who had very few flaws. Though this characterization of Dempsey may be true, the author never hesitates to be openly affectionate toward him. Anyway, this a pretty good book and deserves a read.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good book on early 20th century boxing
Review: I didn't know much about Jack Dempsey before reading this book, but I definitely learned a lot about him from this bio. Kahn portrays him as the greatest heavyweight champ ever who was not only blessed with great boxing skills but also great strength of character - imagine the guts it took to reject Al Capone's offer to fix a fight for him. The book justifiably concentrates mainly on Dempsey's fighting career which included bouts with Willard, Carpentier, Firpo, and Tunney rather than spending much time discussing his pre and post boxing life. This bio does a fine job discussing not only Dempsey but also the characters that surrounded him including his difficult first wife and the boxing promoters Rickard and Kearns. The only problem I have with this book is that because the author knew his subject personally and obviously admired him a great deal, Dempsey is portrayed as a man who was larger than life and who had very few flaws. Though this characterization of Dempsey may be true, the author never hesitates to be openly affectionate toward him. Anyway, this a pretty good book and deserves a read.
Rating:
Summary: Another Gem From Roger Kahn
Review: I have to admit that I am a special fan of Roger Kahn's writings, especially his books on baseball. I don't claim to be a boxing fan, but, as the author said, more than enough has been written on Babe Ruth and not enough on Jack Dempsey. Kahn gives descriptive accounts on Dempsey's bouts with Jess Willard, Georges Carpentier, Gene Tunney, Luis Firpo, and others. The 1920's has often been called The Golden Age of Sports and the author enlightens the reader with happenings from the political and social world of the '20's as well. The great sports writers of the period such as Haywood Hale Broun, Paul Gallico, Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, and William O. McGeehan are all here as well. In reviewing the Demspey/Tunney fight in Chicago it is interesting to note that Kahn says, "I am looking at a crooked referee." You do not have to be a boxing fan to enjoy the book. I am not. If, however, you enjoy American history the decade of the Roaring Twenties provided us with a cast of characters that Roger Kahn will bring back to life for you. What are you waiting for? Give yourself a treat.
Rating:
Summary: A great portrait of the Roaring '20s and its Champ.
Review: If you like sports, boxing, or history, you must read this book. If you're fascinated by the world of celebrities, read this book. Roger Kahn has put together an engaging, fast-moving biography that often reads more like a novel. His portrayal of the many colorful characters populating the boxing scene at the time is incisive and humorous. The boxing scenes are engrossing and, not knowing much about Dempsey's career, I was as enthralled and eager for the outcome as if the matches were happening today. More than the boxing, I learned that Jack Dempsey was even more of a champ outside the ring than inside it. He handled himself with class and dignity, and conducted his affairs with honesty and integrity. He also remained humble and generous throughout his life. Not what you'd expect from the most ferocious boxer in history. At his peak in the ring Dempsey was unmatched; as a celebrity he was second to none, even years after he retired. As a magnet for attention and the ability to fill an arena, Dempsey was easily the equal of modern-day stars such as Michael Jordan--if not superior. Roger Kahn brings it all to life, vividly, and for me this is an unforgettable book about an unforgettable man. Here's to the Champ!
Rating:
Summary: A Flame of Pure Fire is a Pretty Hot Book
Review: If you're a boxing fan, then A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and The Roaring '20's by Roger Kahn is the book for you. Kahn gives a great account of former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Jack Dempsey and the times that helped turn Dempsey into one of America's greatest heroes and a world sporting icon. Kahn gives a great account of Jack's early life as a mining camp hobo and the struggles that Dempsey encountered in going from a Colorado hobo married to a prostitute to winning the greatest title in all of sports - The Heavyweight Championship of the World. Dempsey was raised in a hopeless upbringing with little chance to succeed in life, but through his own spirit he won himself the greatest prize in sports - the Heavyweight Championship. Kahn's book is full of great tales and behind the scenes machinations of fight manager Jack 'Doc' Kearns and fight promoter Tex Rickard as well as the awesome money that was at stake in Jack Dempsey in an America before the Great Depression. Kahn paints a rosy picture of Jack Dempsey and the kind of man that Jack was and would become in his life. It's a great read for boxing fanatics because it tells the stories behind the story and goes into great detail about Jack's personal life and his reign as Champion - as well as his personal tragedies. Kahn seems to know his subject very well, and he even got to know Dempsey on a personal basis. If there is any criticism of the book, it's in the fact that perhaps Kahn knew his subject a little too well and looks at Dempsey with some degree of romanticism and through rose-colored glasses. If you're not a Dempsey sympathizer - then this book is surely not for you. The story of Jack Dempsey has been told many times, (there are no less than 3 or 4 other books on Dempsey) and although this may not be the best book on Jack Dempsey it is still a very good one and worth a read. It's a step back in history to a time of American innocence and great prosperity with Dempsey leading the way.
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