Baddest man : the making of Mike Tyson / Mark Kriegel.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

This sinewy biography from journalist Kriegel (The Good Son) traces Mike Tyson's early life and career. Born in 1966, Tyson came of age in Brooklyn amid financial insecurity, moving constantly as his mother struggled to find work and turning to petty crime by the age of 10. He first became interested in boxing after Muhammad Ali visited the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center where he'd been sent at age 12, and he started training under the supervision of a counselor who happened to be a former champion. Fueled by the rage he carried toward childhood bullies who taunted him for his lisp and glasses, Tyson quickly distinguished himself in the ring and caught the attention of star manager Constantine "Cus" D'Amato during a showcase set up by his counselor. He moved to Upstate New York and began training under the supervised parole of D'Amato, winning his inaugural bout at age 14 with an uppercut that propelled his opponent's mouthpiece six rows into the crowd. Kriegel's nuanced portrait notes the many hardships Tyson faced growing up, including watching his mother's boyfriends brutalize her and getting molested by a stranger, without excusing his flaws, most notably his hair-trigger temper and physical abuse of his first wife. It's an unflinching glimpse into the formative years of a troubled boxing great. Photos. (June)

Booklist Review

One of the most infamous boxers in history, Mike Tyson has fascinated the public for decades. Becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in the world took hard work and determination, and Tyson didn't do it all by himself. Author, journalist, and ESPN boxing commentator Kriegel, who chronicled the life of boxer Ray Mancini in The Good Son (2012), focuses Tyson's biography on the people and places that made Tyson who he is, culminating in his fight against Michael Spinks in 1988. This book doesn't shy away from discussing Tyson's violent and abhorrent behavior, especially towards women, but it also shows how he was affected and altered by a traumatic childhood. 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.

Kirkus Book Review

A controversial champ's beginnings. Kriegel opens with a striking set piece, which characterizes the ex-fighter, who once threatened to eat a ring opponent's children, as "a tennis dad with a goldendoodle." This 2020 scene is our only contemporary glimpse of Tyson, whose first 22 years are the book's subject. Kriegel, a New York tabloid veteran, deftly recaptures "the snowballing phenomenon" of fame and wealth that Tyson earned with his singularly "destructive right uppercut." His early bouts weren't always televised, so his team made VHS highlight reels for news broadcasts. These showed a teenaged Tyson flattening "grown-ass men." Thus did he become boxing's youngest heavyweight champ and "greatest-ever attraction." As the author notes, "Iron Mike" left battered adversaries tottering like "vaudeville clowns." Because the narrative ends in 1988, Tyson's 1992 rape conviction gets only passing mention. But Kriegel doesn't downplay Tyson's misdeeds. Rather, his catalog of Tyson's transgressions foreshadows worse things to come. Accepting the book on its terms, this is a first-rate effort, brisk, irreverent, and astute about its mercurial protagonist and his opportunistic advisers. Tyson, whose heroes included 1920s heavyweight Jack Dempsey, was a "husky" Brooklyn kid who was bullied and got into street fights, landed in a youthful offenders home, and learned his craft from legendary trainer Cus D'Amato, a model for the Burgess Meredith character inRocky. D'Amato has sometimes been depicted as a "secular saint" for his role in Tyson's life, Kriegel notes, but here he's seen wielding 16-year-old Tyson's "future earnings" as a bargaining chip. Perpetuating a sordid boxing tradition, more than one of Tyson's much-older advisers took huge chunks of the Black fighter's paychecks. It's difficult, in an on-demand era, to evoke the mystique that accompanied Tyson's ascent, but this book does an exemplary job. The origin story, grippingly told, of a transcendent, troubled athlete. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.