Baddest Man - by Mark Kriegel (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author whose coverage of Mike Tyson and his inner circle dates back to the 1980s, a magnificent noir epic about fame, race, greed, criminality, trauma, and the creation of the most feared and mesmerizing fighter in boxing history.

On an evening that defined the "greed is good" 1980s, Donald Trump hosted a raft of celebrities and high rollers in a carnival town on the Jersey Shore to bask in the glow created by a twenty-one-year-old heavyweight champion. Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks that night and in ninety-one frenzied seconds earned more than the annual payrolls of the Los Angeles Lakers' and Boston Celtics' players combined.

It had been just eight years since Tyson, a feral child from a dystopian Brooklyn neighborhood, was delivered to boxing's forgotten wizard, Cus D'Amato, who was living a self-imposed exile in upstate New York. Together, Cus and the Kid were an irresistible story of mutual redemption--darlings to the novelists, screenwriters, and newspapermen long charmed by D'Amato, and perfect for the nascent industry of cable television. Way before anyone heard of Tony Soprano, Mike Tyson was HBO's leading man.

It was the greatest sales job in the sport's history, and the most lucrative. But the business of Tyson concealed truths that were darker and more nuanced than the script would allow.

The intervening decades have seen Tyson villainized, lionized, and fetishized--but never, until now, fully humanized. Mark Kriegel, an acclaimed biographer regarded as "the finest boxing writer in America," was a young cityside reporter at the New York Daily News when he was first swept up in the Tyson media hurricane, but here he measures his subject not by whom he knocked out but by what he survived. Though Tyson was billed as a modern-day Jack Dempsey, in truth he was closer to Sonny Liston: Tyson was Black, feared, and born to die young. What made Liston a pariah, though, would make Tyson--in a way his own handlers could never understand--a touchstone for a generation raised on a soundtrack of hip hop and gunfire.

What Peter Guralnick did for Elvis in Last Train to Memphis and James Kaplan for Sinatra in Frank, Kriegel does for Tyson. It's not just the dizzying ascent that he captures but also Tyson's place in the American psyche.

Review Quotes

"Mark Kriegel has done it again. Baddest Man is the Mike Tyson book all of us (and not just boxing fans) have been waiting for, a biography as nimble and powerful as its subject. Unforgettable." --Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of King: A Life and Ali: A Life

"This book, which is a masterpiece from an author who long ago entered the pantheon of the true greats, cements Mark Kriegel as the greatest chronicler of fighting and fighters, even ahead of such lions as W. C. Heinz and William Nack and Norman Mailer. This book is literature, a wonder of the English language sentence to sentence, bound up with such deep reporting that you'll feel at the end like you've crawled into Mike Tyson's skin, tunneled into his soul, until the iron myth slips away and a man in full, broken but also intact, claws off the page." --Wright Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Barn, Pappyland, and The Cost of These Dreams

"Themes of race, power, and wealth are prevalent in Tyson's life, especially when others, realizing his potential, began making decisions on his behalf. Love him or hate him, Tyson's story is interesting, and Kriegel highlights the man behind his public persona. An obvious choice for Tyson fans and readers interested in boxing, who will appreciate Kriegel's focus on the sport's history and the fighters who influenced it." --Booklist

"This sinewy biography from journalist Kriegel (The Good Son) traces Mike Tyson's early life and career . . . [A] nuanced portrait . . . An unflinching glimpse into the formative years of a troubled boxing great." --Publishers Weekly

"Mark Kriegel, one of America's finest living sportswriters, has found the perfect subject in Mike Tyson, a figure of endless fascination and yet enduring mystery. Who else but Kriegel--an old-school reporter with a novelist's touch and feel for the human condition--could peel back the decades of villainization, self-mythology, and shtick that have obscured the story of the rise of the most famous fighter since Muhammad Ali? Gritty, soaring, searing, and funny, Baddest Man is the best sports biography I have read in years." --Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning

"In clear, tough, impassioned prose, Mark Kriegel, who understands the sausage factory of professional boxing better than anyone on earth, gives us the deep inside of Mike Tyson's psyche, and of the needs and fantasies of all who have clung to him: the lovers, the operators, the hangers-on, the sportswriters, and us, a public feasting on what we imagine him to be." --James Kaplan, author of 3 Shades of Blue, Sinatra: The Chairman, and Frank: The Voice

"Few events represented the grandiosity and excess of the 1980s more than a Mike Tyson prizefight. Where else could one find Don King and Donald Trump vying for the same microphone? Tyson did not craft his legend alone. Mark Kriegel delivers a book that only he can by introducing the facilitators, backslappers, and those who looked the other way to capitalize on Tyson's rapid rise. This is an experience Kriegel lived as a reporter and one brought to life for the reader--you can smell the sweat of a decaying gym and hear the thud of a sharp Tyson body blow throughout the lively pages." --Jonathan Abrams, New York Times bestselling author

About the Author

Mark Kriegel, a former sports columnist for the New York Post and the New York Daily News, is a boxing analyst and essayist for ESPN. He is the author of Namath: A Biography, Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich, and The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini. He lives in Santa Monica, California, with his wife, the screenwriter Jenny Lumet.