Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great

Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey

Among the legendary athletes of the 1920s, the unquestioned halcyon days of sports, stands Gene Tunney, the boxer who upset Jack Dempsey in spectacular fashion, notched a 77â€”1 record as a prizefighter, and later avenged his sole setback (to a fearless and highly unorthodox fighter named Harry Greb). Yet within a few years of retiring from the ring, Tunney willingly receded into the background, renouncing the image of jock celebrity that became the stock in trade of so many of his contemporaries. To this day, Gene Tunneyâ€™s name is most often recognized only in conjunction with his epic â€œlong countâ€ second bout with Dempsey.

In Tunney, the veteran journalist and author Jack Cavanaugh gives an account of the incomparable sporting milieu of the Roaring Twenties, centered around Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey, the gladiators whose two titanic clashes transfixed a nation. Cavanaugh traces Tunneyâ€™s life and career, taking us from the mean streets of Tunneyâ€™s native Greenwich Village to the Greenwich, Connecticut, home of his only love, the heiress Polly Lauder; from Parris Island to Yale University; from Tunney learning fisticuffs as a skinny kid at the knee of his longshoreman father to his reign atop boxingâ€™s glamorous heavyweight division.

Gene Tunney defied easy categorization, as a fighter and as a person. He was a sex symbol, a master of defensive boxing strategy, and the possessor of a powerful, and occasionally showy, intellectâ€“qualities that prompted the great sportswriters of the golden age of sports to portray Tunney as â€œaloof.â€ This intelligence would later serve him well in the corporate world, as CEO of several major companies and as a patron of the arts. And while the public craved reports of bad blood between Tunney and Dempsey, the pair were, in reality, respectful ring adversaries who in retirement grew to share a sincere lifelong friendshipâ€“with Dempsey even stumping for Tunneyâ€™s son, John, during the younger Tunneyâ€™s successful run for Congress.

Tunney offers a unique perspective on sports, celebrity, and popular culture in the 1920s. But more than an exciting and insightful real-life tale, replete with heads of state, irrepressible showmen, mobsters, Hollywood luminaries, and the cream of New York society, Tunney is an irresistible story of an American underdog who forever changed the way fans look at their heroes.

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Brand BALLANTINE GROUP
Manufacturer Ballantine Books
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780812967838
Color White
ReleaseDate 2007-10-30
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812967838

Country	USA
Brand	BALLANTINE GROUP
Manufacturer	Ballantine Books
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780812967838
Color	White
ReleaseDate	2007-10-30
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812967838

Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey

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