Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the Culture of Irony

"A brilliant meditation on celebrity and spectatorship and an astute cultural analysis of race and sport, Charles Lemert's Muhammad Ali is also an affectionate biography of one of the most significant figures of our age." Barry Glassner, University of Southern California, author of The Culture of Fear

"Ali's fame was launched on the tide of his astonishing athletic prowess, but it was borne along by the spurting cross-currents of culture, race and politics which boiled so fiercely during the 1960s and 1970s. Lemert is excellent on Ali in relation to these cross-currents, but he also dares to dive deeper, into the secret waters of myth, totem and taboo which still underlie more of human thought and feeling than we may like to admit … This is a remarkably interesting and re-readable essay." Financial Times