Ali stared above the gathering into infinity, his mouth angry, yes blank, then screamed: "Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund! He so ugly, blind men go the other way!...He not only looks bad! You can smell him in another country!" He held his nose. "Mat will the People in Manila think? We can't have a gorilla for a champ. They're gonna think, lookin' at him, that all black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly. If he's champ again, other nations will laugh at us."
Joe turned and gunned a hole in the thin wood of the wall, then flipped over his desk. "Eddie, listen up! Whatever you do, whatever happens, don't stop the fight! We got nowhere to go after this. I'm gonna eat this half-breed's heart right out of his chest!...I mean it...This is the end of him or me."
When Muhammad Ali met Joe Frazier in Manila for the third, bloody act of their heroic trilogy of fights, the rivalry had spun out of control. More than a clash of personalities or fighting styles, the Ali-Frazier matchup had become a kind of madness, inflamed by the media and the politics of race. When the "Thrilla in Manila" was over, the hype no longer mattered: one man was left with a ruin of a life; the other was battered to his soul.
Mark Kram's riveting book begins with the boxers themselves -- who they are and who they were. Interweaving present and past, and told in a voice as powerful as a heavyweight punch, Kram explodes the hagiography surrounding both fighters-particularly Ali. While giving Ali his due as arguably the best fighter of all time, Kram paints a much darker and nuanced version of the legend than anyone has ever dared. Ghosts of Manila is a masterpiece of literary journalism that is sure to take its place alongside A. J. Liebling's The Sweet Science.
Ghosts of Manila is a psychologically riveting study of two heroes, many myths, and the reality behind it all.

Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier

Biographies & Memoirs

Kram Jr., Mark

Community & Culture

Harper

Smokin' Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier

A gripping, all-access biography of Joe Frazier, whose rivalry with Muhammad Ali riveted boxing fans and whose legacy as a figure in American sports and society endures
History will remember the rivalry of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali as one for the ages, a trilogy of extraordinary fights that transcended the world of sports and crossed into a sociocultural drama that divided the country.
Joe Frazier was a much more complex figure than just his rivalry with Ali would suggest. In this riveting and nuanced portrayal, acclaimed sports writer Mark Kram, Jr. unlinks Frazier from Ali and for the first time gives a full-bodied accounting of Frazier’s life, a journey that began as the youngest of thirteen children packed in small farm house, encountering the bigotry and oppression of the Jim Crow South, and continued with his voyage north at age fifteen to develop as a fighter in Philadelphia. 
Tracing Frazier’s life through his momentous bouts with the likes of Ali and George Foreman and the developing perception of him as the anti-Ali in the eyes of blue-collar America, Kram follows the boxer through his retirement in 1981, exploring his relationship with his son, the would-be heavyweight Marvis, and his fragmented home life as well as the uneasy place that Ali continued to occupy in his thoughts. 
A propulsive and richly textured narrative that is also a powerful story about race and class in America, Smokin' Joe is unparalleled in its scope, depth, and access and promises to be the definitive biography of a towering American figure whose life was galvanized by conflict and whose mark has proven lasting.

Ecco

Winner of the 2013 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, Like Any Normal Day is a profound, powerful narrative of a golden boy's tragedy, a woman's unlived life, and a brother's complicated devotion
In the mid-1970s, brothers Buddy and Jimmy Miley were close, both on the verge of impressive athletic careers. A promising high school quarterback, Buddy's potential was cut short by an injury that left him quadriplegic. Immobile and imprisoned in his body for decades, Buddy would watch life pass by from his wheelchair, living at home under his mother's and brother's care, and wondering what his life could have been. 
Buddy and Jimmy visited special hospitals and traveled to Lourdes in search of a miracle, never losing hope as they searched for a cure. But as Buddy suffered increasing pain, and also realized that he would never be able to walk again―and never prove himself capable of being loved by Karen, a woman he'd first met in high school―he asked Jimmy to help him end his life. 
Beautifully written, both heart-wrenching and hopeful, Mark Kram Jr.'s Like Any Normal Day explores the important bonds between families and the depths of what we're willing to do for those we love.

Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion

St. Martin's: Griffin

Imagine Mad Men set not in the advertising world but at 1960s Sports Illustrated, a place where the finest sports staff of any generation was attended by an open bar and almost unlimited expense account. This was the world Mark Kram lived and wrote in, along with his peers including Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins and other major talents. A high school graduate with a gift for revealing the hearts of his subjects, Kram would become one of the greatest sports writers of all time, covering the famed rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Negro League baseball star Cool Papa Bell, doomed soccer legend George Best, Olympic gold medal sprinter Edwin Moses, and others.
The New York Times obituary of Kram in June, 2002 saluted his work in Sports Illustrated by calling him one of its "most lyrical writers of the 1960s and 1970s." Great Men Die Twice selects his best work with a moving introduction by his son, Mark Kram Jr., the PEN/ESPN Award-winning author of Like Any Normal Day.

Great Men Die Twice: The Selected Works of Mark Kram

Sports & Outdoors

Miscellaneous

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kram Jr., Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kram Jr., Mark

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kram Jr., Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier

Smokin' Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier

Smokin' Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier

Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion

Great Men Die Twice: The Selected Works of Mark Kram