{"product_id":"beyond-glory-isbn-9780375726194","title":"Beyond Glory","description":"Nothing in the annals of sports has aroused more passion than the heavyweight fights in New York in 1936 and 1938 between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling — bouts that symbolized the hopes, hatreds, and fears of a world moving toward total war. Acclaimed journalist David Margolick takes us into the careers of both men — a black American and a Nazi German hero — and depicts the extraordinary buildup to their legendary 1938 rematch. Vividly capturing the outpouring of emotion that the two fighters brought forth, Margolick brilliantly illuminates the cultural and social divisions that they came to represent.“Absorbing. . . . Fascinating. . . . Margolick describes all this so vividly that you almost feel you were there sharing in the joy of sweet revenge.” –Ian Buruma, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e“Even if you've never seen a boxing match, \u003ci\u003eBeyond Glory\u003c\/i\u003e is an irresistible read. For fans it is indispensable. . . . Over the last 150-odd pages my pulse raced; by the book's end I felt as if my ears were ringing with the roar that swept through Yankee Stadium bleachers on the night of their rematch.” –Allen Barra, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e“A valuable addition to a growing library of books on sports and culture. . . . \u003ci\u003eBeyond Glory\u003c\/i\u003e is historical reportage, a heavyweight of a book that is likely to be the definitive chronicle of its subject.”– Joyce Carol Oates, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e“A fascinating look at a historical era through the prism of sports.” –Marta Salij, \u003ci\u003eThe Detroit Free Press\u003c\/i\u003eDavid Margolick is a longtime contributing editor at \u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ewhere he writes about culture, the media, and politics\u003ci\u003e. \u003c\/i\u003eHe served as national legal affairs editor at \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times, \u003c\/i\u003ewhere he wrote the weekly At the Bar column for seven years. He is the author most recently of \u003ci\u003eStrange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. \u003c\/i\u003eThis is his fourth book. He lives in New York City.CHAPTER 1Just Off the BoatFive years earlier, on the morning of April 14, 1933, the North   German Lloyd liner \u003ci\u003eBremen\u003c\/i\u003e steamed into New York Harbor, with Max   Schmeling aboard. The setting was spectacular--the mighty vessel,   after its five-day crossing, making its way toward the Statue of   Liberty, with the towers of lower Manhattan beckoning--but scarcely   more epic, at least in the world of sports, than the events about to   unfold. Schmeling would soon attempt something that had never been   done: to regain the heavyweight crown. And his prospects looked good;   after all, many believed he should never have lost it.Schmeling, twenty-seven years old, had been coming to the United   States for five years now, and the arrival ritual had grown routine.   Meeting him aboard the ship would be the usual mob of fight   reporters, who had commandeered a cutter to bring them there: all ten   New York City newspapers had at least one boxing writer, as did the   wire services, and there were emissaries from Boston, Philadelphia,   Newark, and Chicago, to name just a few other cities with boxing   correspondents of their own. Then there would be the photographers   and newsreel boys, who would put Schmeling through the same staged   scenes and make him utter the same wooden dialogue for the cameras.   The previous June, Schmeling had lost the title in a much-criticized   decision to Jack Sharkey. \"We wuz robbed!\" his fiery, outlandish   manager, Joe Jacobs, had immortally declared afterward. But now,   Schmeling, with characteristic determination, had set out to win it   back. And why not? He had already defied the odds three years   earlier, when, in an equally disputed fight, he'd become the first   European ever to win the heavyweight title.A personable sort, Schmeling had long since come to know most of the  reporters by name. They were friendly, irreverent types--smart   alecks--likely to ask an impertinent question or two, but not to be   too persistent or obnoxious about it; whatever edge they had was   certain to be dulled by the good German beer Schmeling always brought   with him. The floating press conference would then pull into the   pier, where he would be greeted by a mob of fight fans coming to show   their support or simply to glimpse a celebrity. Schmeling could   easily have been unpopular; he'd won the title under the most   debatable circumstances, spoke English with a heavy accent, and came   from a country with which America had been at war only fifteen years   earlier. After he'd beaten Sharkey for the title, he'd dragged his   feet on a promised rematch, offending Americans and Germans alike.   But when he lost the crown he'd been a gentleman, picking up an aura   of martyrdom. Though he revealed only so much of himself, there   always appeared to be something endearingly earnest about him.And then there was the good fortune of his physical appearance.   Schmeling looked uncannily like the man who epitomized boxing's   golden era, the legendarily hard-hitting and much-missed Jack   Dempsey, who'd retired only a few years earlier after producing all   five of boxing's million-dollar \"gates\"--that is, fights where ticket   sales went into seven figures. Schmeling had the same build, the same   wavy, dark, slicked-down hair, the same heavy brows. Schmeling's   style in the ring, though, was not the slashing, overwhelmingly   aggressive assault Dempsey favored but something cooler, slower, more   methodical--\"Teutonic,\" as it was often described. And outside the   ring he was as self-contained and calculating as Dempsey was   gregarious.Dempsey was promoting Schmeling's upcoming fight on June 8 in Yankee   Stadium against a promising young California heavyweight named Max   Baer, and was among those greeting Schmeling. The next day's papers   would be filled with pictures of the two men together, wearing nearly   identical suits and topcoats, all but daring readers to tell them   apart. At the pier the confusion had already begun; an excited young   woman broke through the crowd, grabbed Dempsey's hand, and tried to   kiss it. \"Oh, Max!\" she cried. \"You're wonderful!\" Accompanying   Schmeling on the voyage, as always, was Max Machon, his longtime   German trainer. And just as predictably, greeting him at the pier was   Joe Jacobs, an ever-present cigar jutting out of his mouth.Schmeling tried to be boyish and lighthearted with the press, as if   nothing had changed since his last visit to New York the year before.   Anyone bending over to inspect his lapel pin--\"Athletic Club,\" it   said--got water spritzed into his eye. But Schmeling now faced more   than the usual inquiries about the kind of shape he was in, how and   where he planned to train, and the state of his punches. Three months   earlier, Hitler had come to power in Germany. Almost instantly, life   for Germany's 600,000 Jews had changed profoundly, and terrifyingly.   Already, Jews were being banished from universities, public schools,   symphony orchestras, the legal and medical professions. Jewish-owned   newspapers, soon to be confiscated by the government, had to   chronicle the mighty flow of anti-Jewish enactments. In but a couple   of months, the dark ages had descended upon the German-Jewish   community. It was hard to know whether the storm would pass, and   while many Jews quickly left, far more stayed. But it was sobering   indeed when the \u003ci\u003eAngriff\u003c\/i\u003e declared that Germany's Jews were done for,   morally and commercially.Nowhere was their fate followed more closely than in New York, a city   with two million Jews of its own, many of them passionate fight fans   with deep ties to Europe. Three weeks before Schmeling's arrival,   100,000 of them, including 20,000 Jewish veterans of World War I, had   marched through the snow from the Lower East Side to city hall to   protest events in Germany. Four days later, 22,000 of them rallied at   Madison Square Garden, with 35,000 more on the streets outside. Such   protests only fired up the Nazis further. By the time Schmeling   boarded the Bremen, there had been a nationwide boycott of Jewish   businesses in Germany, torchlight processions in support of the   anti-Jewish measures, and paroxysms of violent anti-Semitism.   \"Hundreds of Jews have been beaten or tortured,\" the Berlin   correspondent of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Evening Post\u003c\/i\u003e, H. V. Knickerbocker,   reported shortly before Schmeling steamed in. \"Thousands of Jews have   fled. Thousands of Jews have been, or will be, deprived of their   livelihood.\" Germany's entire Jewish population, he wrote, was in a   state of terror.New York, by contrast, must have seemed the picture of tranquillity   to Schmeling when he arrived. But it had also grown less receptive to   him, more wary. The goodwill he had built up in the United States,   like the goodwill he had by now established with the Nazis, was   impressive but thin, and would require delicacy and dexterity to   preserve. Schmeling faced two fights in America. The first, in the   ring, was hard enough: Baer was a furious puncher who had beaten one   rival to death and very nearly killed another. But Schmeling also   faced the formidable challenge of placating the American fight public   without offending the regime back home, of mollifying Jews and Nazis   simultaneously.Twelve years earlier, on July 2, 1921, fifteen-year-old Max Schmeling   stood outside a newspaper office in Cologne, following an account of   Dempsey's fight against the Frenchman Georges Carpentier as it came   across the wire from the United States. He rooted for Dempsey, not   just because he liked him, but because he wanted the heavyweight   championship to remain in America long enough for him to go there and   get it. Afterward, Schmeling spent some of his meager earnings   watching films of the fight repeatedly in a local theater. He   convinced his father, a navigator on the Hamburg-America line, to pay   for some boxing lessons. Then young Max bought some used gloves and   hung them over his bed.Max Siegfried Adolph Otto Schmeling was born in Klein Luckow, a town   in northern Germany eighty miles north of Berlin, on September 28,   1905, and grew up in Hamburg. He left school early and worked   variously at an advertising firm, as a pipe fitter, and as a   strongman in the circus. He flirted with soccer, but found himself   drawn to boxing. Interest in the sport, which had been illegal and   underground in Germany before World War I, had recently exploded.   German soldiers had learned it as prisoners of war in Britain, or   from the Americans who occupied their country once the war was over.   In Weimar Germany as in the United States, the sport became a great   passion not just of the working classes but also of artists and   intellectuals, who saw in it something pure and manly, elemental and   elegant, timeless and modern. When he visited Germany in 1926, Nat   Fleischer was astounded to see how Germany had embraced the sport.   Germany had forty thousand amateur boxers, he pointed out, and if   only a dozen stars emerged, they could soon menace American hegemony.In Düsseldorf, then in Cologne, Schmeling spent most of his spare   time in boxing clubs. It was in Cologne that he honed his distinctive   style: methodical, scientific, and patient. He became well versed in   the fundamentals of footwork, body movement, and defense; his style   was to bide his time, study his opponent, and wait for openings   rather than to slug it out too early. His right was his money punch,   his left, as someone later put it, merely something for holding his   fork. Schmeling's personal code was regimented: a careful diet, no   alcohol or tobacco, regular hours. When he'd go to the Roxy-Bar (a   favorite hangout for Berlin's athletes and aesthetes) he'd always   order fresh orange juice and \"Café Hag\"--that is, decaffeinated   coffee. He was, as the German weekly \u003ci\u003eBox-Sport\u003c\/i\u003e once wrote, a   \u003ci\u003eMusterknabe\u003c\/i\u003e--a prig. Nothing distracted him from his objective. One   of his fights came only four days after he'd crashed his motorcycle,   killing his fourteen-year-old sister. He won.Schmeling turned professional in 1924, and won nine of his first ten   fights. But \"professional\" was a relative term: when \u003ci\u003eBox-Sport\u003c\/i\u003e's   editor, Arthur Bülow, became his manager, Schmeling had only nine   cents in his pocket. Dempsey visited Cologne in 1925, and Schmeling   was one of three local boxers who fought him in two-round   exhibitions. Fleischer, too, saw Schmeling there, and immediately   cabled the majordomo of American boxing, Tex Rickard of Madison   Square Garden, about him. In August 1926, Schmeling won the German   light heavyweight championship in less than a minute. The following   January, \u003ci\u003eBox-Sport\u003c\/i\u003e called him \"our greatest hope\" and extolled his   \"cold, sure eye, technique, brain and general ability.\" To his   critics, Schmeling was almost too calculating; \u003ci\u003eBox-Sport\u003c\/i\u003e faulted him   for what it called \"an insufficient will to annihilate.\" But that   June, before a frenzied, ecstatic crowd in Dortmund, he beat a   Belgian, Fernand Delarge, for the European light heavyweight   championship. For a country still traumatized by losing a war and in   the throes of political and economic upheaval, it was an epic event.   Moments after he knocked out the Italian Michele Bonaglia in January   1928, eight thousand fans stood up and sang \"Deutschland über Alles.\"Schmeling gained entry into elite German intellectual circles,   meeting the filmmaker Josef von Sternberg, the artist George Grosz   (for whom he became a model), Heinrich Mann, the novelist, and other   Weimar cultural luminaries. He relished the role. \u003ci\u003e\"Künstler, schenkt   mir Eure Gunst--Boxen ist auch 'ne Kunst!\"\u003c\/i\u003e he wrote in the guest book   of one artistic hangout: \"Artists, grant me your favor--boxing is   also an art!\" That someone with his limited background and education   could make himself comfortable in so alien a world was an early   indication of Schmeling's extraordinary adaptability. Conversely,   German society was showing its ability to adapt itself to him, to see   in him whatever it wanted.Even before seeing or meeting Schmeling, Paul Gallico, a sports   columnist for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e, a man who spoke German and   read the German newspapers, began praising him and urging him to come   to the United States. Schmeling had his lapses and his losses, which   some attributed to his new and highfalutin life. But in April 1928,   despite fracturing his thumb early in the fight, Schmeling outpointed   Franz Diener for the German heavyweight championship. Now, America   really beckoned; a cartoon in \u003ci\u003eBox-Sport\u003c\/i\u003e showed Schmeling \"swimming   after the dollar\" across the Atlantic. That May, Schmeling,   accompanied by Bülow, arrived in New York for the first time. His   appearance rated only meager coverage in a few newspapers--all of   which misspelled his name.Schmeling's injured thumb precluded any immediate action. For months,   he lived off the charity of Madame Hranoush Aglaganian Bey, a   Constantinople-born grande dame who ran a famous training camp in   Summit, New Jersey. Gradually Schmeling's idleness, poverty, and his   poor prospects soured him on Bülow, and Harry Sperber, a reporter for   the \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker Staats-Zeitung\u003c\/i\u003e, a German-American paper, urged   Schmeling to find himself an American manager, someone familiar with   boxing in New York and wily and aggressive enough to get him a few   fights. Schmeling initially hired Nat Fleischer, who advanced him   $250 to tide him over until his thumb healed. But everything changed   when Joe Jacobs came by Madame Bey's to see one of his fighters.   Before long, Jacobs had elbowed Bülow and Fleischer aside--a maneuver   that earned him the nickname \"Yussel the Muscle,\" \"Yussel\" being the   Yiddish diminutive for Joseph.* (In one story, someone asked   Schmeling where he got the three crisp $1,000 bills he was   brandishing. \"Joe Jacobs gave 'em to me,\" he said. \"He told me to buy   myself some cigars.\") Schmeling believed the Jews controlled New   York, and now he had someone to help him negotiate around the place.   For Schmeling, it was the beginning of a long and bitter feud with   Bülow, with whom he technically remained under contract. It was also   the start of what was surely one of the most incongruous and   tumultuous partnerships in the history of sports.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305529528549,"sku":"NP9780375726194","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375726194.jpg?v=1767722522","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/beyond-glory-isbn-9780375726194","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}