Rating: 
Summary: Sonny Liston a Guest In His Own Biography
Review: 3.5 StarsI liked most of this book, but do not consider it a biography. I think too much time - too many pages - were dedicated to the mob figures and peripheral issues and people - and it took away from Sonny - ironically - like they did. It seemed the writing style was trying too hard to be tuff and every now and then a swear would pop up - oddly - like it was just there to be there. The last 50 pages are unquestionably powerful. Toshes writing style and way work perfectly here. I think Sonny deserves more. I would not consider this a biography of the champ, but I'm glad I read it. I'm glad I got to learn some parts of Sonny Liston that I didn't know before - so that alone is worth reading it - as long as you realize that Sonny is only a bit player in what is supposed to be his biography. In addition to this I'd recommend David Remnick's King of The World - it's a fantastic book surrounded by Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali. Read both and you get somewhat of a view of Sonny Liston. Rest in Peace Champ!
Rating: 
Summary: Tosches hits it
Review: "The Devil and Sonny Liston" is a spellbinding tale about one of sports most misunderstood characters. The insight and detail Tosches presents are void of political correctness and give an intriguing portrait of one of professional boxing's most feared competitors and the sport's underlying corruption of the 50's and 60's. Muhammad Ali worshippers are in for an education. No punches are pulled. A great book!
Rating:
Summary: Tosches takes a dive
Review: A truly talented writer is one who can write about a subject in which I have no interest and keep me interested. Tosches is a talented writer because I find boxing a bore. "The Devil and Sonny Liston" (or "Night Train," Tosches' preferred title which was used in the UK) held my interest, yet if I came to the book as a fan of either boxing or the title subject, I think I'd be disappointed. As he did in his superior biography of Dean Martin, the author uses the central figure more as a starting point to cover a wider terrain, in both cases, the influence of organized crime in 20th century America. But whereas Dino came alive on the page, Liston takes a few valiant swings before he's knocked to the canvas, a supporting character in his own life. If Liston took a dive in the famous match against Cassius Clay, and Tosches is convinced he did (and makes a convincing case despite a lack of objectivity - Tosches obviously despises Clay as a triumph of style over substance), Tosches did the same here by writing this book strictly for the cash (an admission he makes in "In the Hand of Dante"). I don't condemn that, after all, the book is still a good read, but that doesn't change my feeling that Liston and his fans got shortchanged.
Rating: 
Summary: Tosches botches it
Review: Sonny Liston was one of the real bad boys of boxing, although the term "bad boy" is undersized, like the gloves Liston had to wear until he could afford a custom-made pair to cover his massive fists. One of the baddest of bad men, then, one of the three truly fearsome heavyweights of the last fifty years, a brutal ring warrior who dispatched his opponents with ease until his career was clipped by Cassius Clay under what many view as suspect circumstances. Subsequently overshadowed, his reputation has been revised recently and a growing minority now view him as the greatest heavyweight of all. Nick Tosches' biography is certainly aptly timed.
Liston's early life was mysterious. His birth date is unknown, but was apparently some time between 1928 and 1932. His father, Tobe, was born four years after the abolition of slavery in the almost unfathomably distant year of 1870. Next to nothing is known of Sonny's childhood, but it was evidently hard. He came to St Louis as a young man who couldn't read or write and followed the all-too-well-trodden path of petty crime, prison and boxing. He turned out to have outstanding ability, including tremendous punching power. Opponents described his blows as paralyzing or excruciatingly painful. By the late 50's he was a leading heavyweight contender. He finally got his championship shot against Floyd Paterson, whom he demolished in two fights in a total time of four and a half minutes.
Liston's career by this point had been severely tarnished. He was managed by the Mob, drank heavily, had run-ins with the police, even during his tenure as champion, and apparently settled his way out of being charged with sexual assault. In February, 1964 his 18-month reign as champion ended when he refused to rise from his stool at the start of the seventh round against Cassius Clay, claiming that his left arm was numb and thereby becoming the first champion since 1919 to go out sitting down. In the rematch Liston was knocked out by one punch in the first round. The fight film (surely the second-most scrutinized strip of film from the 60s) has failed to satisfy fans that a blow of any force was delivered. But real or not, the "Phantom Punch" didn't just stop Liston, it ended his career. An attempt to get into movies was a complete failure (although his commercial spot for Braniff Airlines, co-starring Andy Warhol, sounds memorable). Sonny mounted a comeback bid in the late 60's but it was derailed when he was KOd by Leotis Martin (although the fight also ended Martin's career, as he suffered a detached retina). In his last fight, in 1970 (100 years after the birth of his father), Sonny banged up Chuck Wepner. His shady life ended in shady circumstances. He was found dead at home by his wife in January, 1971. As he had already been dead several days, however, the precise date of death is unknown. The cause of death, likewise, could not be established with certainty.
While Liston and his times are fascinating - not least Liston's role as the godfather of all subsequent bad-ass African-American sports and music celebrities - their treatment by Tosches is decidedly pedestrian. There is little about boxing, with almost no description of any of Liston's fights and little about the overall scene or the other leading contenders. Tosches' main focus is on organized crime. Unfortunately, most of this material is second-rate. Apart from the problem of a relative lack of documentation, the would-be Mob historian writing of decades-old events is also confronted by the fact that many of the principals are dead, while the survivors may be afflicted by (genuine) memory loss and were all habitual liars to begin with anyway. Tosches wastes space with transcribed filler from various public inquiries (does anyone really want to read about Blinky Palermo or Barney Baker taking the fifth a dozen times?). But he fails to tackle the big question of the narrative - were the fights against Ali fixed? Tosches has his opinions, but adds no new evidence. Nor does he address the obvious fact that the motive for a fix was highly problematic. Allegedly, Liston's owners deliberately gave up a valuable, high-prestige and revenue-generating property - the heavyweight championship. For what - so they could bet on a fix at 8-1? And then how did they get Sonny to take a dive? While it might be rational to throw a fight in pursuit of a title shot, as Jake LaMotta admitted to having done, the championship itself is what fighter live, train and suffer for, the rewards are enormous and the alternatives bleak, as most fighters have neither skills nor interests outside the ring. The notion that a fighter would throw away the title, his lifetime goal, simply to satisfy his manager's machinations requires a little explanation. And even if the first fight was rigged, why not recapture the crown in the second, where the 8-5 odds offered a much less lucrative payoff? The evident dive against Ali notwithstanding, the fix theory raises as many questions as it answers.
Tosches' investigation of Liston's death is similarly inconclusive. Tosches states at the outset that Liston was murdered, but later admits that there is no evidence to support this; nor is there much evidence for any other cause, such as drug overdose.
Tosches success is in drawing his subject as a man who never escaped servitude, who could handle himself in the ring but not in life, but who, for all his bad side also maintained a kind of dignity. At the same time, the portrait of Liston is sketchy and unsatisfying. The main research effort having been wasted on minor Mob figures, and the writing style being classic blowhard, this is a book with some shortcomings. But its subject is a remarkable figure, and the photos are good, especially the cover and the last one. Bad as he was, Sonny Liston deserves a better biography.
Rating:
Summary: Tosches hits it
Review: "The Devil and Sonny Liston" is a spellbinding tale about one of sports most misunderstood characters. The insight and detail Tosches presents are void of political correctness and give an intriguing portrait of one of professional boxing's most feared competitors and the sport's underlying corruption of the 50's and 60's. Muhammad Ali worshippers are in for an education. No punches are pulled. A great book!
Rating: 
Summary: This is one for the Bargain Bin
Review: "The Devil and Sonny Lisaton," does not deal with Liston very much. The book covers mob trivia and rehashed info on mobster influence in boxing during the fifties, but contains very little interesting info on Liston, on his fight career, his opponents or anything else about the man. This is one of the worst boxing books ever published!
Rating:
Summary: sonny and the mob
Review: i didnt love this book but didnt hate it either. i wish the book would have dived into the intricacies of the fights much more.
Rating:
Summary: Tosches needs to stick to music and stay out of boxing
Review: Frankly, I do not know how someone could do such a job of mangling Sonny Liston's biography. As Tosche's so frequently points out, Liston was certainly among the baddest of the bad, a real physical monster and a sinister figure. He was menacing, he was a criminal, he was backed by the mafia, he came to a tragic end, and he lived in the Jim Crowe south. Most important of all, the man was George Foreman and Mike Tyson rolled into one How does one write a truly awful book about a man like this? Tosches does it by ignoring why Liston is a compelling national figure in the first place - that he was the single most powerful heavyweight champion in history, a true terror in the ring. He ALMOST COMPLETELY IGNORES BOXING in favor of sordid tales of street crime, slavery analogies and disecting mob control of boxing in the 1950s and 1960s. We learn more about the nuts and bolts of Frankie Carbo's (the mobster who ran boxing in the 1950s) career than we do Liston's. While an athelete's biography should be about more than just his athletic accomplishments, that biography ought to be centered around athletics. Judging from the book, Tosches decided that learning about the sport that made Liston famous was not worth his time. He instead went solely after what he was interested in: the seamier side of Liston's life and racism. He does not even try to disguise his lack of interest in boxing. The sheer arrogance in writing about Liston and ignoring the details of the man's boxing career is astounding, and it is bad authorship. Tosches tells us that Liston was a physical terror, but passes up the best material for demonstrating it. Liston's capacity for violence in this book is not found in the drama of the ring, squaring off against a trained, powerful, competent opponent. It is found in ambush robberies and gang beating a cop. Frankly, you don't need to be Sonny Liston to do that (although it does help). Tosches has succeeded in writing a biography of Sonny Liston which makes Liston out to be one member of a vast ensemble cast. He is not a prominent character in his own biography! Skip this book. I am glad I received it as a gift, and did not have to pay for it. The only redeeming feature is the cover, which is excellent. If you get it as a gift too, display it. Don't waste your time reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: NO, I DISAGREE. SONNY LISTON WAS NOT JUST A MAN.
Review: Although that I doubt some of the things written in this biography, I commend Nick Tosches for his great effort. Some issues surrounding Sonny's life may never be resolved.
I was not thrilled some years ago, when I learnt that the epitaph of this great champion read:
"Charles Sonny Liston: A Man."
Although I respect that statement, I still maintain that it is not befitting enough. Sonny was not just a man. He was, and as of today, still the only heavyweight to have won the World Undisputed Championship in just one round. In 1962, he blew away the then (two-time) champion, Floyd Patterson, in just (two minutes and ten seconds of) the first round. He repeated this feat in the subsequent rematch he gave (challenger) Patterson.
Although taller and a bit heavier, Sonny Liston was the Mike Tyson of the 1960s. He tamed every contender except Muhammad Ali (known then as Cassius Clay). And, I disagree with this biographer, Floyd Patterson, and others who insinuate that Liston "threw" that fight (in 1964) to Ali. Not at all! Everything was real. The videotape/DVD is still in the market, (including Amazon.com). It made it very clear. No doubt; no question! Ali won the fight. He dethroned Liston.
But Liston's loss took little away from his intimidating reputation. Till today, every pundit acknowledges that he was a great champ. Ali did so too; and described him with these scary words:
"I used to watch Liston, although his managers would not let me train with him. He was everything they said he was: a mass of muscles, power and force. His bare fists measured a fantastic fourteen inches round the knuckles, and needed specially made gloves to cover them. He was the King-Kong of boxing: a human destroyer. On the scale of dinosaurs, Sonny Liston would be the biggest and the baddest that ever shook the ground: the brontosaurus."
Henry Cooper, then among the heavyweight top contenders, who (although failed to win the crown) ranks among the best heavyweights that Britain has produced, once said: "I simply refused to fight Sonny Liston in any circumstance."
Similar things have been said and written about the late champ. Whoever knew him well, knew that he was not just a man. He was, and will always be more than that. Nick's research on him was interesting; although that I still maintain my reservations.
Rating:
Summary: A DARK, DARK, DARK PLACE
Review: nick tosches has gone into a great depth of research and finally provides fascinating insight into the entire sonny liston story and family tree. like sonny, nick has a hard hitting-type style, but occasionally slips too much into "fan" mode. to call the ultra bizarre Muhammad Ali-Liston rematch a fix is forgiveable, infact it's popular belief. but no way the 1st fight, where a young fresh Ali pounds a bloodied and ageing liston into quitting on his stool was a fix. sometimes nick goes a little too indepth on peripheral figures, and offers little detail on a few significant fights. however those problems aside, nick has interviewed a valuable collective to contribute to his book, put together a lot of new information, and writes the dark story of sonny superbly. this book takes you directly into the seedy under belly of 60s gangsters and boxing, but without the risk. i definately recommend it. THIS IS AN ENGROSSING READ!
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