A Flame of Pure Fire

Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s

Roger Kahn

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780151002962
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544173910
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Jack Dempsey was perfectly suited to the time in which he fought, the time when the United States first felt the throb of its own overwhelming power. For eight years and two months after World War I, Dempsey, with his fierce good looks and matchless dedication to the kill, was heavyweight champion of the world. A Flame of Pure Fire is the extraordinary story of a man and a country growing to maturity in a blaze of strength and exuberance that nearly burned them to ash. Hobo, roughneck, fighter, lover, millionaire, movie star, and, finally, a gentleman of rare generosity and sincerity, Dempsey embodied an America grappling with the confusing demands of preeminence. Dempsey lived a life that touched every part of the American experience in the first half of the twentieth century. Roger Kahn, one of our preeminent writers about the human side of sport, has found in Dempsey a subject that matches his own manifold talents. A friend of Dempsey's and an insightful observer of the ways in which sport can measure a society's evolution, Kahn reaches a new and exciting stage in his acclaimed career with this book. In the story of a man John Lardner called "a flame of pure fire, at last a hero," Roger Kahn finds the heart of America.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue
• Book One: The Thorns of Glory
• 1. When All the Seas Ran Dry
• 2. The Rocky Road to Toledo, Ohio
• 3. A Strange and Violent Heat Wave
• 4. The Left Hook from Olympus
• 5. The Champion and the Whore
• Book Two: Loser and Still Champion
• 6. Pilgrimage
• 7. Preliminaries
• 8. The Battle of the Century
• 9. Strange Interlude
• 10. The Champ’s Best Fight
• 11. Disorder and Sorrow
• 12. Loser and Still Champion
• Epilogue
• A Word on Sources
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author