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Wall Street Journal

‘The Sweet Science': A.J. Liebling's Chronicle of Boxing Culture

For a pastime defined by competitive brutality and associations with organized crime, boxing has attracted the affection of remarkable writers. The list of American luminaries who have analyzed the sport equals those of baseball, football and basketball, and includes Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Joyce Carol Oates and Ernest Hemingway. But A.J. Liebling did it best, in his 1956 volume 'The Sweet Science.' The book's title is a phrase coined by 19th-century British journalist Pierce Egan, whom Liebling quotes frequently, calling him 'the Herodotus of the London prize ring' and comparing him to Thucydides. The longtime New Yorker writer also cites Mozart, the Duke of Wellington, James Joyce and the Battle of Gallipoli in the pages of 'The Sweet Science,' a collection of his magazine pieces. Its mixture of highbrow culture and lowbrow fighting is among its signatures.