Ali: A Life

'Jonathan Eig's Ali: A Life is the business - 640 pages of patient scholarship and intelligent reassessment written in crackly prose and dancing gleefully and illuminatingly through the well-documented highlights while never shying away from the less glorious shadows.' -- Giles Smith * The Times * 'A fine piece of journalism of the best American kind...wrought with sound judgment and rigorous prose. Ali's life is dissected with the detachment of a pathologist, and the picture isn't always a pretty one... In 50 or 100 years, people might wonder what all the fuss was about. Muhammad Ali: was there really such a character? They should read this book and learn that yes, there was, for all his flaws.' -- Nick Pitt * Sunday Times * 'This richly researched, sympathetic yet unsparing portrait of a controversial figure...could not have come at a more appropriate time... As Muhammad Ali's life was an epic of a life, so Ali: A Life is an epic of a biography... Even the familiar may be glanced from a new perspective in Eig's fluent prose.' -- Joyce Carol Oates * New York Times Book Review * 'Finally, after so many works focusing on this fight or that, the whole man, his whole life, is presented here' -- Ken Burns 'Goes deeper and uncovers more than any Ali biography has before * Esquire * 'Jonathan Eigs Ali: A Life is the first comprehensive biography worthy of this titanic figure... [Eig] vigorously narrates the story of the man who transformed the landscape of race and sports... Eig also paints Alis bouts with vivid detail and captivating sweep... Ali stirs together the sweet and the spicy, the gifts and the failings, the charm and the rage, the grace and the greed, the pride and the ego. Together, they made Ali the transcendent athlete of his age.' -- Aram Goudsouzian * Washington Post * 'Does a remarkable job of synthesising the warring elements of Ali's life. Above all, it delivers a portrait of a hero that does not ignore his all too human flaws. This biography...ends in darkness & melancholy. Fortunately, the earlier chapters dazzle us.' -- Clive Davis * The Times * 'Ali's extraordinary story, in all its complexity, is told in Jonathan Eig's excellent Ali: A Life' -- Martin Chilton * Daily Telegraph * 'There have been countless tomes about the iconic fighter, of course, but Eig's is the definitive work to date.' * Sports Illustrated Sports Book of the Year * 'Stunning new biography...Ali is a big, fat, entertaining and illuminating read...What makes Eigs book stand out is its broad scope, its detailed reportage and its lively, cinematic writing.' -- Laurie Hertzel * Star Tribune * 'Each blow echoes on the pages of Jonathan Eigs relentless, image-altering biography Ali: A Life...Though replete with tales of race, religion, war protest, sex, marital turmoil and skulduggery, this book is, more than anything else, an indictment of boxing. The cumulative damage of Alis boxing career is a terrible and haunting thing to read about, and it becomes all the more so when you remind yourself that Mr. Eigs subject is one of American sports most beloved figures, not some luckless tomato can.' -- John Schulian * Wall Street Journal * 'Eig...has exhaustively covered the career of boxings very greatest in an unprecedented level of detail...The result is a biography that is as unflinching about Alis marriages and extra-marital activities as it is about his sporting decline. The closing chapters...are heartbreaking.' -- James Grey * Daily Express * 'Achieved the minor miracle of refreshing ground already trodden by writers of the quality of Thomas Hauser, Mike Marqusee and David Remnick, relating groundbreaking analysis of the punches taken by Muhammad Ali, particularly in his later fights, to his subsequent ill health'

Born in New York in 1964, Jonathan Eig is a New York Times bestselling author. A former senior special reporter for the Wall Street Journal, he has also written for the New York Times and Esquire, as well as appearing on The Today Show and The Daily Show. He has written five previous books, the last of which was the critically acclaimed Ali:ALife and lives in Chicago with his wife and children.