The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle

Rating:
Summary: REALLY, REALLY GREAT BOOK!!!!
Review: "As both a writer and a boxer, Robert Anasi hears the fight game's music twice as loud. The result: a soundtrack for the wounded and the healing; for the seasoned veteran and the baffled student. With lilting precision Anasi captures the grace, the courage, and the madness of a boxer's everyday life. In a time when Boxing Books written by Journalists, Novelists, and Academics are as common as bloody noses, "The Gloves" is unique in that it offers a reader rare insights and observations from the fighter's point of view. Anasi's boxing skills may only allow him to compete at the amateur level, but as a writer he's gone straight to the pros."

Rating:
Summary: REALLY, REALLY GREAT BOOK!!!!
Review: A great, interesting and entertaining account of his journey to the Golden Gloves. The author has a 'real voice'.
The story flowed so smooth that it had me turning page, after page, after page...

Rating:
Summary: A Pleasure to Read
Review: A great, interesting and entertaining account of his journey to the Golden Gloves. The author has a 'real voice'.
The story flowed so smooth that it had me turning page, after page, after page...

Rating:
Summary: Impressive, Exciting and Honest Look At Amateur Boxing
Review: Addictive, Exciting and Honest Look At Amateur Boxing

4.75 Stars

George Plimpton is quoted as having said that The Gloves "As good a book as any I've read about the sport" - not exactly a ringing endorsement and I was a little worried -

This is actually a great book right from the start.

I was immediately hooked and addicted to his trainer's (Milton) style of fighting - something about the concept of Southpaw's just grabs me and especially a non-natural Southpaw - anyway that's what truly hooked me in.

The story is true - and the experience of reading Anasi's practice and journey through the world of amateur boxing is so real and compelling that you just can't put the book down.

The characters and people he meets and trains with are very interesting and he does such a great job in retelling his tale.

There was a point where the book dragged a bit, but as a whole it's a great story.

It's an impressive, exciting and honest look at amateur boxing, of amateur boxers and the sport of boxing in general.

Great book - give it a read.


Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: Anasi is a writer first and a boxer second. None-the-less he is passionate about the sport and serious about his intent in learning the craft. Because he is a writer first, he provides insights and word-crafting that is not normally found in boxing literature. One either has boxers talking to writers that write about them, writers that never really boxed writing about boxing, or boxers that can't write trying to do so. This is not a book about training in boxing, but it is a book about the spirit of boxing and that it can grab you and hold you indefinitely. Anasi does a great job in providing first person insight into not only his dream's, but those of his stable-mates.

Rating:
Summary: Among the Fighters
Review: I enjoyed this book immensely. It is one of the best boxing books I ever read and is especially interesting because Anasi is an amateur boxer himeslf and the story is essentially an autobiography. I am a boxing fan, with friends in the pro game and spent some time around two of the gyms mentioned by Anasi (training for a time in one of them) as well as reading about and watching pro and amateur boxing as often as often as I can find it in the papers and on TV. So I think I know an honest book about boxing when I read it. I even wrote an article once about Amy Berg, a Gloves winner mentioned in "The Gloves", who trained with one of the main personalities in Anasi's book. Still I had no idea that training for the Golden Gloves is as rigorous (better call it brutal) as Anasi describes. The book reflects a lot of truths about boxing and the people who are in it, both exploiters and those boxers often exploited by it. It should be a 'must read' for anyone interested in improving boxing (The Daily News..sponsors of the Golden Gloves...and Sen. McCain please note). It is also a great study of what brings people into the sport and what makes it so addictive.
I trust the Hollywood readers are already looking at The Gloves. It was difficult putting it down and as with the best of books, it is like losing a friend when you have to come to the end. I may quibble with the way that ending was framed but, that is small argument with tnis exceptionally gifted writer.

Rating:
Summary: BOXING IS NOT INSIDE ALL MEN OR WOMEN !
Review: I must say at the start I have never been a boxer and not a follower of the sport, however, this book was most enjoyable to me and well explained the joy of boxing and the highs and lows experienced along the way. The author is a good writer and as he lived the subject matter, we are led into the life of a wannabe fighter. I was totally unaware of the positive side of boxing and realized far more athletes in hockey, football and auto racing die or become maimed than in boxing. If you wish to find out why boxing could be appealing to you, read the book.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific Fun for Amateur Boxing Fans
Review: I picked up Robert Anasi's The Gloves in anticipation of a good,solid story of a fighter's road to the Golden Gloves competition.I was hoping for a book by a fighter turned writer.Instead,it's by a writer turned fighter,and he's no George Plimpton.To be fair,he does touch on the fighters psyche,the exhilaration of training,the various setbacks along the way,the anticipation as the fight draws near,and the dread and fear of failure.He just doesn't do it convincingly to me.I've fought in the Gloves and experienced all these feelings,and Anasi just doesn't seem to be experiencing the same things.Maybe it's because of his unorthodox trainer.Maybe it's because he was continually beaten to a pulp by a woman boxer during sparring sessions.Maybe what really turned me off was when he mentioned doing Heroin.Not that boxing has ever been full of choirboys,but Anasi comes across as neither a genuine fighter or any kind of tough guy.It's more the story of a guy who should not have entered the Gloves,but did anyway,and wrote a dull story about it.The ultimate amateur boxing book has yet to be written.

Rating:
Summary: bittersweet boxing memoir
Review: Robert Anasi... decided to enter the Golden Gloves at age thirty-three, in the last year that he was eligible. It was something he'd thought about since he took up boxing in his twenties, mostly as a way to stay in shape, but with the chance to pursue a dream slipping away, he finally went for it. He even signed on with a tough but talented trainer, Milton LaCroix, a man with a reputation for being difficult to work with--he's apparently alienated everyone involved in New York's boxing world--but also a reputation for turning out good, though unorthodox, fighters.

Mr. Anasi's chronicle, which combines elements of George Plimpton style participatory sportswriting with in-depth reportage, nicely captures both the qualities that make boxing alluring--the colorful cast of characters; the dedication required; the physical challenge; the savage beauty of a punch well thrown and a fight well
fought; there's even an amusingly heartfelt paean to sweat--and those that make it repulsive--the genuine danger of injury; the exploitation of fighters by greedy managers and promoters; the serious questions that surround even the judging of an amateur bout and the draw for a tournament bracket. As in all the best of such accounts, he succeeds in capturing this dying subculture in its entirety, warts and all, while conveying his obvious love for it.

He tells the stories of the people he meets along the way with great sympathy but also with brutal honesty, a combination that might only be possible from a Sarah Lawrence graduate who's also fought enough to begin experiencing neurological effects--memory loss. Mr. Anasi subjects himself to the same tough but fair treatment as he seeks to understand his own obsession and what seems to have been a final bout victory but ended up a loss. In the end he concludes that for all the problems that attend boxing, there is something uniquely worthwhile that occurs within the ring itself, a meeting of one man with another on terms of complete equality, a meeting that though it ends in victory for only one, ends in mutual respect between the two.

If you're a boxing fan, or used to be, you'll certainly love the book. If you hate boxing you'll find much here to justify your hatred. If you've never understood the attraction of the sport you will after reading it. Most of all, if you like good storytelling, superior cultural reporting, and quality writing, you'll find them all here, and you'll enjoy them even if you don't care about boxing. It's an impressive debut and if it wins the readership it deserves may well become a classic along the lines of Paper Lion, Muscle, Friday Night Lights or Pat Jordan's A False Spring.