Button Books £9.99 www.buttonbooks.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-78708-147-5
Every year the BBC holds a sports award ceremony called Sports Personality of the year. As the 20th century came to a close it went one further and announced that there would be a sports personality of the Century. There were a whole bunch of names banded about, Pelé, Jesse Jackson etc, but one name kept up on cropping up and that was Muhammad Ali. He accumulated more votes from BBC viewers than the combined total of the five other contenders: Pelé, George Best, Donald Bradman, Jack Nicklaus, and Jesse Owens. So who better to feature in button books fact filled series which has included people such as Frida Kahlo, Einstein, Mozart, Shakespeare and many other luminaries.
Ali bestrode the world as a superstar like no other, and his gift for publicity almost matched his boxing skills making him recognisable pretty much everywhere on the planet (apart from undiscovered tribes in the Amazon). In these 32 pages we get 250 facts which combine with fun graphics and tables to make it an engaging read for the 8+ age group.
One double page introuduces us to the Olympic games and a young Cassius Clay – we will talk about the name change later – boxing for the USA in 1960. It also shows his return to the Olympics in 1996 to light the torch at the games. The book reminds us that this is one of the oldest sports in the world along with wrestling and that in ancient times holding an opponent was forbidden – sorry Muhammad that’s one of your tricks in the bin! Naturally we look at his poor upbringing – the son of a billboard painter from Louisville, Kentucky and how seeing Black People treated unfairly in the American South eventually gave him a reason to become politically active.
His conversion to becoming a Muslim, his opposition to the Vietnam war and the treatment of Black People made him unpopular amidst accusations of being a draft dodger and yet we see the famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ and his two fights against Sonny Liston as well as the ‘Phantom Punch’. Other famous boxers are included and plenty oh sitory of the sport – there’s even a glossary of terms.
This series from Button Books so shows no signs of flagging and the graphics and charts really bring the subject to life.