"McRae brings to the highly charged, obsessive world of professional boxing a novelist's eye and ear for revealing detail and convincingly recalled dialogue. This is an impassioned book."—Joyce Carol Oates, Los Angeles Times

Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, by Donald McRae, award-winning author of twelve non-fiction books and staff writer for The Guardian, is widely considered of one of the best boxing books all time.

This is a new edition, released in the United States for the first time, that includes a new chapter by the author, plus a stunning cover that features a painting of boxer James Toney by noted boxing artist Amanda Kelley.

There is no other sport like boxing. Over twenty years ago, Donald McRae set out across the United States and his adopted home, Britain, to find deeper meaning in the brutal trade that had transfixed him since he was a young man. The result is a stunning chronicle that captures not only McRae's compelling personal journey through the world of professional prizefighting, but also the stories of some of its biggest names in boxing—James Toney, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Oscar De La Hoya, Naseem Hamed, Roy Jones, Jr., and others.

Singular in his ability to uncover the emotional forces that drive men to get into the ring, McRae brilliantly exposes the hopes and fears and obsessions of these legendary fighters, while revealing some of his own along the way. What he shares with them most, he comes to realize, is that he is hopelessly, and willingly, lost in boxing.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 The Baddest Man

2 The Force

3 This Is Boxing, Baby

4 Oscar’s Night

5 The King and the Prince

6 Guns and Fathers

7 Looking on Darkness

8 Death and the Man

9 The Cinderella Men

10 The Soldier Boy

11 Nothing Is Forever

12 The Beacon

13 The Bite

14 Fading Away

15 Still Lost in Boxing

Acknowledgments