ON BOXING

Garden City: Dolphin/Doubleday, 1987. First trade edition. Hardcover. A fine copy in a near fine, clean, dust jacket. John Ranard. Illustrated with photographs by John Ranard. This is as fine a book as ever has been written on the subject. This book follows in the tradition of boxing-loving writers like Hemingway and Mailer. In a slim volume expanded from a New York Times Magazine article, Oates candidly assays "The Sweet Science" for its spectacle, aesthetic elements, and its history from ancient Greece and Rome to today's ring dominated by callous promoters, casinos, and TV. She concedes boxing's brutality and often seamy side but finds positive merits as tragic theater.