THIS week sees the 45th anniversary of the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Zaire. As fight fans, we are custodians of history and have a moral obligation to keep these anniversaries alive for the benefit of the youth of today, who may be lacing up the gloves for the first time. The Jamaican political activist, Marcus Garvey, once famously said, “A people without knowledge of its past is like a tree without roots.” To this end, Lewis Erenberg’s recently published The Rumble in the Jungle locates the event in its sociopolitical context, with the ramifications of the Vietnam War as a backdrop. Along with Norman Mailer’s classic, The Fight, this is a great way of offering a branch of understanding of the cultural significance of this spectacle between older and younger generations.
Matt Long, Burton ABC
GOOD CHOICE