Tunney by Jack Cavanaugh

Tunney by Jack Cavanaugh

Among the legendary athletes of the 1920s, the unquestioned halcyon days of sports, stands Gene Tunney, the boxer who upset Jack Dempsey in spectacular fashion, notched a 77--1 record as a prizefighter, and later avenged his sole setback (to a fearless and highly unorthodox fighter named Harry Greb). Yet within a few years of retiring from the ring, Tunney willingly receded into the background, renouncing the image of jock celebrity that became the stock in trade of so many of his contemporaries. To this day, Gene Tunney's name is most often recognized only in conjunction with his epic long count second bout with Dempsey.

In Tunney, the veteran journalist and author Jack Cavanaugh gives an account of the incomparable sporting milieu of the Roaring Twenties, centered around Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey, the gladiators whose two titanic clashes transfixed a nation. Cavanaugh traces Tunney's life and career, taking us from the mean streets of Tunney's native Greenwich Village to the Greenwich, Connecticut, home of his only love, the heiress Polly Lauder; from Parris Island to Yale University; from Tunney learning fisticuffs as a skinny kid at the knee of his longshoreman father to his reign atop boxing's glamorous heavyweight division.

Gene Tunney defied easy categorization, as a fighter and as a person. He was a sex symbol, a master of defensive boxing strategy, and the possessor of a powerful, and occasionally showy, intellect-qualities that prompted the great sportswriters of the golden age of sports to portray Tunney as aloof. This intelligence would later serve him well in the corporate world, as CEO of several major companies and as a patron of the arts. And while the public craved reports of bad blood between Tunney and Dempsey, the pair were, in reality, respectful ring adversaries who in retirement grew to share a sincere lifelong friendship-with Dempsey even stumping for Tunney's son, John, during the younger Tunney's successful run for Congress.

Tunney offers a unique perspective on sports, celebrity, and popular culture in the 1920s. But more than an exciting and insightful real-life tale, replete with heads of state, irrepressible showmen, mobsters, Hollywood luminaries, and the cream of New York society, Tunney is an irresistible story of an American underdog who forever changed the way fans look at their heroes.

Jack Cavanaugh is a veteran sportswriter whose work has appeared most notably on the sports pages of The New York Times, for which he covered hundreds of assignments over 25 years. He was a news reporter for ABC for five years and CBS for two years, and was an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Cavanaugh is the author of five other books, including Season of '42, Giants Among Men, The Gipper, Damn the Disabilities, Full Speed Ahead!, and Tunney, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in biography. In addition, Cavanaugh has been a frequent contributor to Sports Illustrated and has written for Reader's Digest, Tennis and Golf magazines as well as other national publications. He lives with his wife, Marge, in Connecticut. Pete Dawkins was an All-American halfback for Army who won the 1958 Heisman Trophy and the 1958 Maxwell Award. A Rhodes Scholar, he served with the 82nd Airborne and won two Bronze Stars for valor in Vietnam. After a 24-year career in the Army, he retired as a Brigadier General in 1983 and moved on to a successful business career.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780812967838
ISBN 10	0812967836
Title	Tunney
Author	Jack Cavanaugh
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2007-10-30
Number of pages	496
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable