Description
Book SynopsisGleason's Gym is the last remaining institution of New York's Golden Age of boxing. Jake LaMotta, Muhammad Ali, Hector Camacho, Mike Tyson--the alumni of Gleason's are a roster of boxing greats. Founded in the Bronx in 1937, Gleason's moved in the mid-1980s to what has since become one of New York's wealthiest residential areas--Brooklyn's DUMBO. G
Trade Review"Trimbur ... capture[s] the faces and dramas--often internal--of a modern, urban boxing gym."--Choice "This is rich and fascinating book... Lucid and refreshingly free of unessential academic jargon, this is a book that should be read by any anthropologist, historian or sociologist seeking to understand the changing world of sport and leisure since the 1980s. Most importantly, it is a book is written with great humanity."--Tony Collins, Sport in History "Trimbur has written a wonderful book about the world of boxing, specifically that place and space dedicated to boxing known as Gleason's Gym. Anyone who wants to understand boxing as practiced in 21st-century Brooklyn should read the sociological gift bestowed upon us called Come Out Swinging."--Joseph Trumino, American Journal of Sociology
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi List of Prominent Participants xv Preface xvii Chapter One: Survival in a City Transformed: The Urban Boxing Gym in Postindustrial New York 1 Chapter Two: Work without Wages 16 Chapter Three: Tough Love and Intimacy in a Community of Men 39 Chapter Four: Passing Time: The Expressive Culture of Everyday Gym Life 63 Chapter Five: The Changing Politics of Gender 89 Chapter Six: Buying and Selling Blackness: White-Collar Boxing and the Cultural Capital of Racial Difference 117 Epilogue 142 Methodological Appendix: Ethnographic Research in the Urban Gym 149 Notes 155 References 181 Index 193